All Chapters of Runaway Heiress: The Billionaire’s Forgotten Bride: Chapter 241 - Chapter 250

The guest room smelled of lavender detergent and emptiness. It was a sterile scent. Unlived in.Aurora woke up before the alarm. The nausea hit her first—a wave of dizziness that tilted the room on its axis, spinning the minimalist artwork on the walls into a blur of gray and beige.She sat up, clutching the sheets. The movement was a mistake.Saliva flooded her mouth. The specific, metallic taste of a body rejecting its own equilibrium.She scrambled out of bed, her bare feet slapping against the cold hardwood, and ran for the en-suite bathroom. She barely made it to the toilet before her stomach turned inside out.There was nothing to purge. She hadn't eaten dinner last night. The fight with Liam had left her hollow, filled only with the acid of angry words and the heavy, settling dust of disappointment. So she heaved dryly, her body shuddering with the effort, her knuckles white as she gripped the porcelain rim.When the spasms finally stopped, she slumped back against the cabinet,

The lie tasted like peppermint.Aurora sat on the crinkling paper of the exam table, a mint dissolving on her tongue to mask the sour taste of morning sickness. She had told Liam she was at the AVA showroom in SoHo, reviewing textile samples for the spring collection. She had even texted him a photo of a fabric swatch she’d saved on her phone from last week.Deception, she thought, smoothing the paper gown over her knees. It’s become a reflex.Dr. Evans’ private office on Park Avenue was a sanctuary of beige linen and soft jazz. It was designed to make women forget they were being examined, probed, and evaluated. But Aurora couldn't forget. The air smelled of rubbing alcohol and expensive lilies—the scent of sterile biological truths.The door opened. Dr. Evans, a woman with silver hair and a face that had seen every variation of female joy and grief, walked in. She held a tablet, her expression unreadable."Well, Aurora," she said, sitting on the rolling stool. "The urine test was ac

Aurora woke up to the sound of a vibration against glass.For a second, she didn't know where she was. The air was too cold. The smell was wrong—not the lavender of the guest room, not the cedar of the master suite, but the sharp, recycled scent of commercial HVAC and stale espresso.She sat up, gasping as a cramp seized her neck.She was in her office at AVA Headquarters.She had come here last night after the terrace, after the champagne toast that felt like a funeral rite. She had told Liam she needed to review the Tokyo blueprints. In reality, she just needed to be somewhere where the walls didn't whisper about babies and blood pressure. She had curled up on the Knoll sofa around 2:00 AM, wrapping herself in a spare pashmina, and passed out from sheer exhaustion.The vibration came again. A relentless, angry buzz.Her phone was sitting on the glass coffee table, dancing against the surface.The screen lit up the dark office. CLAIRE - EMERGENCY.The time was 5:14 AM.Aurora’s stoma

The hallway outside the executive conference room was lined with abstract art—slashes of red and black on stark white canvas. To Aurora, they looked like wounds.She walked fast, her heels striking the marble floor with a violence that vibrated up her shins. Her heart was hammering a frantic, uneven rhythm against her ribs. Thump-thump-skip-thump.High risk, the doctor had said. Bathing the fetus in adrenaline.Aurora pressed a hand to her chest, trying to force her breathing to slow, but the rage was a physical thing. It was a hot, suffocating smoke filling her lungs.Liam had sent her away. He had looked at her—his wife, his partner, the mother of his children—and seen a liability. He had chosen the "objective" evidence of a temp worker over the instinct of the woman who had built an empire beside him.She reached the elevators. She pressed the button.The light didn't turn on."Damn it," she hissed, hitting it again.She needed to leave. She needed to get out of this building befor

The penthouse was quiet. Not the peaceful silence of a home at rest, but the heavy, pressurized silence of a submarine deep underwater.Liam closed the front door softly, locking out the city. It was 3:17 AM.He leaned his forehead against the cool wood of the door for a moment, closing his eyes. His body ached. A dull throb behind his eyes, a tightness in his shoulders that no amount of stretching could release. He had spent the last four hours on a call with Tokyo, negotiating debt restructuring in fluent Japanese while his mind replayed the sound of his wife’s voice cracking in his office.Don't compare me to him.He pushed off the door. He walked through the dark living room, navigating by the light of the city spilling through the floor-to-ceiling windows. He passed the piles of paper Claire hadn't cleared yet. He passed the empty champagne flute on the terrace coping.He stopped outside the master bedroom door.Last night, she had slept in the guest room. Tonight, the door was c