All Chapters of The billionaire who never wanted a bride : Chapter 61 - Chapter 70

The first thing Ariella noticed was the silence.Not the peaceful kind. Not the quiet that soothed.This silence was heavy, suffocating, the kind that pressed against her ears until her heartbeat became the loudest thing in the world.The café door swung shut behind them with a dull thud.Elias locked it.That single click echoed like a verdict.Ariella stood frozen near the counter, her fingers still curled around her phone, knuckles white. Her breath came shallow, uneven, as if her lungs no longer remembered how to work properly.Her mother stood across the room, hands trembling, eyes rimmed red like someone who had cried long before tonight and never truly stopped.“Say something,” Ariella whispered.No one did.The silence stretched, tightening around her chest until it hurt.“I said something,” she repeated, her voice cracking this time.Elias finally turned to face her.He looked nothing like the man she loved.His shoulders were tense, jaw tight, eyes dark with a weight she had

The first thing Ariella noticed was the smell.Not perfume. Not hospital antiseptic.It was something colder. Older. Like a place where decisions were made without mercy.The woman standing in the doorway did not rush toward her. She did not cry or gasp or whisper her name the way Ariella had imagined in a thousand secret fantasies growing up.She simply stood there.Watching.Studying.As if Ariella were a problem that needed solving.“So,” the woman said at last, her voice calm, measured. “You look just like him.”Ariella’s throat tightened. “You’re… my mother?”The word felt fragile. Dangerous.The woman’s lips curved slightly. Not a smile. Not warmth. More like recognition. “I gave birth to you, yes.”Gave birth.Now I’m your mother.Now I missed you.Just a fact. A transaction.Something inside Ariella recoiled.Elias stepped forward instinctively. “She’s not ready for this.”The woman didn’t even glance at him. “You never were either, Elias.”That was when Ariella realized somet

The silence after Elias’s words was not empty.It was loaded.Heavy.Dangerous.Ariella felt it press against her skin, seep into her bones, tighten around her throat until breathing became an effort.Pregnant.The word echoed in her head like a foreign language she had never learned but somehow understood too well.The man who called himself Elias’s father was the first to move.Slowly.Deliberately.As if savoring the moment.“Well,” he said softly, his voice calm in a way that made Ariella’s stomach churn. “This just became far more interesting.”Ariella’s hands trembled as they rested against her stomach. She had not known. Not truly. There had been signs she ignored. Fatigue she blamed on stress. Nausea she dismissed as fear.Now everything made horrifying sense.“This changes nothing,” Elias said fiercely, straining against the men holding him. “You will not touch her. You will not touch the child.”The man turned his gaze to him, studying him the way a scientist studied a speci

Darkness did not mean silence.It meant confusion.Ariella came back to herself in fragments.Cold metal beneath her spine. The slow, aching pulse in her lower abdomen. The echo of alarms that were no longer sounding but still screamed inside her skull.She sucked in a breath and immediately regretted it.Pain bloomed sharp and deep, radiating outward like a warning.Her hand flew to her stomach.The baby moved again.Not violently this time.Deliberately.As if listening.“Easy,” a voice murmured from somewhere to her left. “Don’t fight it.”Ariella turned her head.Isabella.She was seated beside the bed, one wrist cuffed to a steel rail, her free hand resting lightly on Ariella’s arm. Her face was pale but focused, eyes sharp even in the dim emergency lighting.“You’re awake,” Isabella said. “Good. That makes one of us conscious by choice.”Ariella swallowed. Her throat burned. “Where… where are we?”“Sublevel seven,” Isabella replied. “Older than the rest of the facility. They don

They didn’t fall.Not the way gravity intended.The moment the floor split open, something unseen wrapped around Ariella’s body, cradling her midair as fire and debris roared past them. Heat scorched her skin, smoke clawed into her lungs, but she never hit the ground.Elias did.He slammed into the descending shaft below with bone-cracking force, his body absorbing the impact like the laws of physics had bent just for him. The walls screamed as metal warped inward, pulled toward him, drawn by whatever power now lived under his skin.“Ariella!” Isabella shouted, her voice torn away by the chaos.Alexander reached for her, but the floor lurched again, splitting them apart as the facility began to fold in on itself like a dying beast.Then everything went black.Not darkness.Depth.Ariella opened her eyes to red light pulsing faintly above her. She was lying on a cold stone, her body aching but intact. The air was thick, ancient, humming with a low vibration that settled into her bones.