Semua Bab Pregnant For My Ex-Husband’s Billionaire Best Friend: Bab 51 - Bab 60

Cole’s POV.The Main House always felt less like a home and more like a museum dedicated to a dead era. It was a mausoleum of Lander history, filled with portraits of dead men who judged you from the walls with stony eyes. The air was always stagnant, smelling of lemon polish, old dust, and secrets that had been buried under the floorboards for decades.As I walked Sabrina up the limestone steps, her hand tucked securely in the crook of my elbow, I could feel the temperature drop. It wasn't the weather—Los Angeles was balmy tonight, the crickets singing in the hedges—it was the atmosphere. We were walking into the lion's den, and we both knew it."Ready?" I murmured, squeezing her hand, feeling the slight tremor in her fingers."Ready," she whispered back. She straightened her spine, lifting her chin. She was wearing the midnight blue velvet gown she had worn to the ball in Gstaad. It was a power move, a reminder of the night we solidified our bond. She looked regal, untouchable, like

Sabrina’s POV.The morning after the dinner with Patricia, the estate felt different. The sun was shining, casting bright geometric patterns across the bedroom floor, but there was a storm brewing inside the house. It was a heavy, suffocating silence that pressed against my eardrums.I woke up alone. The space beside me was cold, the sheets undisturbed, pristine in a way that made my chest ache. Cole hadn't come to bed at all.I dragged myself out of bed, wrapping my silk robe around my shivering frame. I didn't bother with slippers. The cold marble of the hallway floor kept me grounded as I searched for him. The house felt too big today, too full of echoes. Every shadow looked like Patricia’s knowing smirk, every creak of the floorboards sounded like the tap-tap-tap of her nervous finger against the table.I found Cole in the library downstairs. It was a room he rarely used, filled with first editions and the smell of old leather and unsmoked cigars. He wasn't working. He was standin

Sabrina’s POV.The digital clock on the bedside table read 2:14 AM.I rolled over, my hand seeking the warmth of the space beside me, but I found only cool, undisturbed sheets.Cole was gone. Again.For the last three nights since the dinner at Patricia’s, he had been distant. Not cold—he still held my hand, still asked about the baby, still kissed me with a desperate sort of intensity—but he was distracted. He was living somewhere else, somewhere dark inside his own head.I sat up, pushing the heavy duvet aside. I knew about the nightmares. I knew about the guilt he carried over his parents. But this felt different. This wasn't just grief, it was tension. It was the coil of a spring waiting to snap.I slipped my feet into my slippers and wrapped my robe tight around my growing waist. I walked out of the bedroom and down the silent, carpeted hallway toward his study.A sliver of light escaped from beneath the heavy oak door.I didn't knock. We were past knocking.I pushed the door ope

Sabrina’s POV.The waiting was the hardest part. It was a slow, agonizing torture that made the opulent walls of the Lander estate feel like the bars of a golden cage.Two days had passed since we found the bank transfer in the study. Forty-eight hours of living with a ghost in the house. Two days of sitting across from Patricia at breakfast, passing her the silver sugar bowl, smiling politely while my insides twisted with the knowledge that she was a monster.I watched her pour tea with steady hands—hands that had signed a check for two million dollars to cover up a murder. I watched her dote on Maxwell, her voice dripping with maternal concern, wondering if she had felt anything at all when her brother and sister-in-law died in that ravine.The house felt suffocating. The air conditioning hummed, but it couldn't chase away the chill that had settled in my bones. Every shadow in the hallway looked like a threat. Every creak of the floorboards sounded like footsteps coming to silence

Cole’s POV.The flight back to Los Angeles was silent, but it was the silence of a war room, not a funeral.Silas Thorne sat in the back of the jet, staring out the window at the clouds, clutching the armrest like it was a lifeline. He looked smaller now that he was out of the desert, a relic of a past I was trying to exhume.Sabrina sat across from me, her laptop open. She was already working, typing furiously. She hadn't complained once about the heat, the danger, or the fact that we were smuggling a witness across state lines. She looked fierce.I looked at the jagged piece of metal sitting on the table between us. The black bumper with the streak of metallic blue paint.Nick Blow.The name tasted like ash in my mouth.I remembered him. He was a giant of a man, always standing in the shadows of my father’s office. He used to let me play with his radio when I was ten. He taught me how to throw a punch. I had looked up to him. I had trusted him to keep my family safe.And all the whi