Todos los capítulos de Priced By My Billionaire Nemesis: Capítulo 151 - Capítulo 160

Jaden did not think of it as a deadline.Deadlines invited panic. Panic invited error. What he was working within was a window, and windows were meant to be used before they closed on their own.He stood alone in the third floor room while the technicians finished their last checks. They moved carefully now, no unnecessary conversation, no wasted motion. Tools were cleaned before being packed away. Surfaces were wiped even where nothing visible had touched them. The room was settling into readiness, not urgency, but something closer to restraint.He watched without interfering.Interference suggested doubt, and doubt had no place here.The space was larger than required, deliberately so. Confinement accelerated stress responses. Space slowed them. He had learned long ago that people panicked less when they could move freely, even if the boundaries of that movement were fixed. A wide perimeter did not mean freedom. It meant containment without resistance.The lighting adjusted in silen

The RV sat half-concealed beneath a stand of fir trees, its matte exterior dulled further by a film of road dust and pine pollen. It had been positioned deliberately, angled slightly off the gravel turnout so it would not catch headlights from the valley road below. From a distance it looked abandoned, the kind of vehicle someone had parked to hike and forgotten. Up close, it hummed faintly with contained power.The forest pressed in on all sides. The air carried the damp chill of late afternoon, the kind that settled into fabric and skin and made metal feel colder than it should. Mist clung low along the ground where the terrain dipped, weaving between tree trunks and pooling in shallow depressions like breath that had nowhere else to go. Somewhere farther downhill, water moved over rock in a narrow stream, steady and indifferent.Inside the RV, the air was warmer but tense with motion. Cases lay open across the narrow aisle. Equipment was arranged with quiet efficiency across the sma

The valley changed before the structure appeared.The air thickened first.Not warmer in temperature, but heavier in texture, as if it held something manufactured rather than grown. Adrian slowed without signaling it, letting his breathing settle into the rhythm of the descent. Boone adjusted his pace automatically, falling half a step behind, giving Adrian visual priority.The forest here did not feel wild. It felt managed.Underbrush had been cleared in subtle arcs that followed no natural pattern. Branches had been trimmed high enough to open sightlines without advertising the intent. Fallen logs had been repositioned rather than left to rot. It was the kind of landscaping done by someone who wanted visibility without exposure.Adrian crouched and pressed two fingers into the soil near the base of a pine. The ground was compacted beneath the top layer of needles. Not by animals. Not by hikers. The compression was recent and directional.“Vehicle weight,” Boone murmured behind him.

The moment I stepped fully into the room, the darkness broke.Fluorescent lights flickered overhead, one strip at a time, buzzing faintly before stabilizing into a hard, surgical white. The hum deepened, steady and mechanical, vibrating through the ceiling and into my bones. The light did not warm the room. It exposed it.For a second I stood frozen just inside the threshold, my hand still wrapped around the key card, my pulse climbing too fast for the quiet that surrounded me.Then I began to see.The platform in the center of the room no longer pretended to be anything else. Under this light there was no way to mistake it for a precautionary medical bed. It was narrower than I remembered. Higher. The surface was molded in subtle ridges that did not cradle a body but aligned it. Positioned it. Along both sides recessed brackets sat flush with the frame, engineered into the structure itself.Restraints.Above it, folded into the ceiling, were articulated operating lights. Their metal

They cut through the trees and the sound of her breathing became clear.Too sharp. Too fast. Not the rhythm of someone pacing herself. The rhythm of someone running on fear alone.Adrian saw her fully then.Her coat was buttoned wrong at the collar, one side pulled higher than the other as if she had dressed in the dark and never checked the mirror. It was thick wool, charcoal gray, meant for cold mornings and short drives, not for climbing down unstable mountain slopes. Beneath it he caught flashes of a heavy knit dress that reached below her knees, dark and clinging from sweat. Flat leather shoes. No tread. No grip. Every step she took on loose gravel was a risk.Her hair was loose and tangled around her face, snagged by branches. One hand stayed pressed over her abdomen even while she ran.She was not running cleanly. Her gait was uneven, protective, careful but desperate. She leaned slightly to one side without realizing it, guarding herself. Guarding the child.For one suspended s