บททั้งหมดของ THE CEO'S FORBIDDEN FLAME : บทที่ 41 - บทที่ 50

Custody did not look the way Valerie imagined.There were no dramatic cells. No chains. No dark corridors lined with screaming men. It was quieter than that.Too clean. Too controlled. Too confident.The building sat just outside the city, hidden behind layers of authorization and silence. No signage. No windows that opened. No sense of time once you stepped inside.Valerie walked through the entrance without hesitation.Her name still opened some doors.Not many.But enough.The officer escorting her did not speak. He simply scanned her credentials, checked a list she could not see, and motioned for her to follow.Each step echoed louder than the last.Her heart pounded, not with fear but with restraint. Every instinct in her body screamed to move faster, to demand answers, to tear through walls if that was what it took.But Ethan had survived by patience.She would honor that.They stopped at a thick glass partition.Interview Room C.The officer keyed something into the panel.You

Vivian’s hands would not stop shaking.She sat on the edge of the narrow bed in her childhood room, the air thick with the scent of dust and old polish. The house had been sealed for years. Valerie had kept it untouched like a wound she refused to press. Tonight, it felt like a trap.The walls remembered.Vivian could feel them watching.Her phone lay face down beside her, silent after the last message she had sent. They know about the ledger. And they are here.Footsteps echoed faintly somewhere below.Vivian closed her eyes.No. Not yet.She pressed her palms to her temples, breathing slowly, forcing herself to stay present. Fear had always been the enemy. Fear turned memory into noise. Fear locked words behind her tongue.But memory was stirring.Not in fragments this time.In sequence.Clear.Sharp.The night returned to her with brutal precision.She was small again, feet barely touching the floor as she sat hidden behind the heavy curtains in her parents’ bedroom. The recorder f

The call came at dawn. Not to Valerie’s phone. To the quiet room.The old landline that rang only when someone remembered it existed.Valerie froze mid step, the city light bleeding through the blinds behind her. The sound cut through the room like a pulse.The woman from Carter and Wells lifted her head slowly.No one uses that number anymore, she said.Valerie crossed the room and lifted the receiver.Hello.For a moment there was nothing but breath.Then a voice she had not heard in more than twenty years spoke her name.Valerie.Her grip tightened.Who is this?The voice trembled.You do not remember me. But your mother did.The room felt suddenly cold.Say your name.A pause….Elias Moore.Valerie’s heart stuttered. The night watchman.The words came unbidden from memory. A man who used to sit near the loading bay when she was a child. He smelled of coffee and old paper. He used to wave at her when her mother worked late.You were transferred after the fire, Valerie said slowly.

The city woke to chaos. Screens across the country flickered at the same moment. Morning shows stalled mid sentence. Stock tickers froze. Social feeds paused, then refreshed with a single live broadcast replacing everything else.Valerie Kings stood behind a podium that had not been used in years.The seal behind her was old. Forgotten. Powerful.Deferred Authority Tribunal.Her hair was pulled back. Her face is calm. Her spine was unyielding.She did not wait for applause.She did not wait for permission. She spoke.Good morning.Her voice carried without strain.I was suspended by a board that believed power belonged to proximity rather than truth.Murmurs rippled through studios. Anchors leaned closer to their cameras.Today that suspension ends.A reporter tried to interrupt.Valerie raised her hand once. Silence followed.Twenty years ago, Valerie continued, my mother built a contingency. Not to protect herself. But to protect this company from men who confuse control with owners

Smoke burned Valerie’s lungs as she ran.The stairwell twisted downward in choking darkness, emergency lights flickering red like a pulse counting down her life. Every step echoed with distant gunfire, the sharp crack of violence tearing through the building she had once ruled with calm authority. Now it was a battlefield.Her heels were gone. She had kicked them off without thinking, skin scraping against concrete as she descended. Pain registered distantly. Survival came first.Her phone vibrated again. She did not slow. “Come home”. The architect’s words replayed in her mind.Home.He meant the place where it had all begun. The estate. The house where her mother died. The place he believed still owned her.She laughed under her breath, breathless and raw.You never understood me.A blast shook the stairwell behind her. Dust rained down. The lights died completely. Darkness swallowed everything.Valerie stopped. Counted her breaths and Listened. Footsteps above. Heavy. Rushed. Not d