Semua Bab The Worthless Ex-Wife's Revenge : Bab 191 - Bab 200

SerenaEthan and I looked at each other for a long moment after Desmond left.Neither of us spoke.The document sat on the blanket between us like something alive.Twenty percent to my father's son I never knew.The same twenty percent that had just been acquired by an unknown entity while Lawrence Global bled on the open market. The timing was too precise to be coincidence. Whoever was buying those shares knew about this document. Knew about the son. Knew about the provision.Which meant they either were the son. Or they were working with him."Get some rest," Ethan said finally.I looked at him. "How am I supposed to rest after...""Calm down, babe," he said. "The meeting is tomorrow. You have to rest and handle the board tomorrow." He picked up the document carefully and set it on the side.I looked at the ceiling.Everything in me wanted to get up. To call Desmond back. To start pulling at the threads of this immediately.But my stomach was still aching and my body felt like it h

MarcusEight hours.I sat at the kitchen table and looked at the number on my phone screen and felt the walls closing in from every direction.Eight hours before the Boss made good on everything he had promised.My mother was in the next room humming something to herself while she arranged things on the shelf the way she always did when she was trying to make a space feel like home. The sound of it made something in my chest pull tight.She didn't know.She was humming and arranging and completely unaware that her name had been spoken by a man who collected on his promises the way other men collected debts. Quietly. Completely. Without exception.No, I can't continue to wait like this. I had to do something. I can't allow him to kill the only family I had left.I stood up."Mother."She appeared in the doorway with a small ceramic pot in her hands. The one she had bought at the market three years ago and carried everywhere since. "What is it? You want tea?""No," I said. "Sit down."S

EthanI stared at the phone in Marcus's hand long after the line went dead.Two hours.The voice had been distorted but the confidence behind it was not. This was not a man making empty threats. This was a man who had already poisoned my wife in my own house. Who had already killed two people in my entrance hall without blinking. Who had placed people inside my security like it was nothing.He delivered on what he promised.Marcus was looking at me with the particular expression of a man who had run out of everything. Pride. Options. Pretense. All of it gone. Just a man standing at a gate with blood on his face and nothing left to offer except the truth of how badly he was afraid."Please." His voice cracked on the word. "I know I have no right to ask you for anything. I know that. After everything I did to Serena. After everything." He pressed his hand against his mouth briefly. His eyes were wet. "I couldn't do it. I swear to you I could not hurt her again. I would rather die than d

MarcusI walked away from Ethan's gate and told myself to breathe.In. Out. One foot. Then the other.Ethan had made the calls. His people were on their way to my mother. Victoria would be covered. I had done the only thing left available to me and somehow, impossibly, it had worked.For now.I kept walking.The road outside the estate was long and quiet. High walls on both sides. Trees lining the pavement and casting long shadows in the late afternoon light. Peaceful in the way that expensive neighbourhoods are peaceful. The kind of quiet that money buys and maintains deliberately.I loosened my collar and kept moving.I had been walking for maybe three minutes when something made me look back.Instinct. The particular prickling at the back of the neck that the body produces when it has noticed something the mind hasn't caught up to yet.I sas four men, all in black with dark jackets, face caps pulled low, hands tucked into their sides in the specific way of people who are carrying s

MarcusPain was the first thing.Before I remembered where I was. Before I remembered anything. Just pain, sitting in my hand, my ribs and radiating outward from both with a dull insistent throbbing that made the simple act of consciousness feel like hard work.I opened my eyes slowly.The ceiling above me was unfamiliar. High, clean and cream coloured with a small light fitting in the centre that was switched off. Natural light was coming from somewhere to my left. Warm and quiet.I turned my head.A room. Large and simply furnished. A wardrobe. A chair. Curtains that were half open. Everything was clean and ordered in the particular way of someone who kept their space the way they kept themselves. Deliberate. No excess.I had no idea where I was.I tried to push myself upright.The pain in my hand exploded immediately and I groaned loud enough that the sound surprised me. I fell back against the pillow and lay there breathing through it with my eyes pressed shut.Just then, the door