บททั้งหมดของ THE HEIRESS GAME;REBIRTH AND RUIN: บทที่ 41 - บทที่ 50

Adeline's POVThe isolation gown they made me wear was pale blue and papery.It crinkled with every movement, stiff and antiseptic-smelling, the kind that reminded you exactly where you were and exactly why. I put it on without thinking.Operating on autopilot was the only thing I was capable of right then.Mikhail's name had opened the ICU doors the way it opened most things--without resistance, without waiting.Normally they would not even let us in yet. I knew that. The nurse at the station had started to say so, her mouth already forming the words, and then she looked at Mikhail and the words simply did not come.Doors opened. We were shown through. That was the power he carried in this building, in every corridor, in every room and right now I was grateful for every inch of it.I pressed my palm flat against the door for just a moment before pushing it open.Natasha went in first.I followed.He looked so pale.That was the first thing. Not the tubes, though there were several, f

Adeline's POVThe notification banner dropped across my screen before I had even finished reading the message.My first thought was the video. The forensic rebuttal we had posted, the one that had cracked the public narrative just enough to introduce doubt. I had been half-expecting a counter-move from Conrad's side all evening, another wave of commentary or another carefully constructed lie pushed through a faceless account.But it wasn't that.Unknown number. One line of text.I know things about him you don't. Things that can end this. --DI read it twice. Then a third time.The initial was the thing that snagged in me.Small and almost casual, like the person on the other end had debated whether to sign it at all and then decided that one letter was all they were willing to commit to. D. It told me almost nothing and just enough at the same time.I typed back quickly before I could second-guess it.Who is this?I pressed send. Watched the screen. The two grey ticks sat there wit

Adeline's POVI had always hated the walk out of a room you had just lost.The boardroom was one thing. Four walls, a closed door, a private disaster. But the corridor outside was something else entirely.The open office, the glass partitions, the employees of Royce Industries who had presumably heard enough through walls and internet alerts to know that whatever had happened in that room had not gone well. They moved out of my path without being asked. Eyes dropping to laptops, to phones, to absolutely anything that was not my face. The ones who did look had the particular expression of people trying to appear neutral and failing.I kept my head up.It was the only thing I had left to keep.By the time the lift doors closed and I was alone inside it, the back of my throat was burning in a way that had nothing to do with tears. I had used those already. This was something rawer. Something that sat between grief and fury and couldn't decide which one it wanted to be.Mikhail was waiti

Mikhail's POVI had made a mistake.That was the first clear thought that arrived. A mistake. Plain and stated and sitting in my chest like a stone I had put there myself.The room was quiet. The lamp had burned itself down to a low amber glow. Beside me, Adeline's breathing had finally slowed and the hand that had been tracing absent circles against my chest had gone still. Perhaps she was asleep. I hoped she was. I did not deserve to know either way.I stared at the ceiling and did not move.The scent of her was everywhere.Her hair, something warm and faintly floral that I had been aware of for weeks without permitting myself to name it. Her skin, the particular warmth of it against mine. I was a man who had spent thirty years learning how to keep his mind ordered.Surgery required it, leadership required it, surviving loss required it.And right now I could not locate a single compartment into which I could fold any of this.It refused to be filed.That was its own kind of

Adeline's POVThree words.I know the truth.I read them again. Then a third time, the way I always read things that mattered.Once to understand, once to check, once to decide. The coffee cup was still in my hand. I set it down carefully.Same number. The D from last night, the one that had gone quiet and left me with grey ticks and no sleep and a question that had been sitting at the back of my mind all morning underneath everything else.My thumbs moved before I had fully decided to let them."Prove it. How."I put the phone face-down on the desk and picked up the briefing notes and made myself work.The day was strange without him.I noticed it the way you noticed a sound you had grown used to — by its absence, by the shape of the quiet it left behind. No car at seven. No coffee appearing beside my elbow without being asked. No presence in the doorway when something required a second opinion. I called him at eleven. The line rang out. I called again at two and got the same si