Runaway Heiress: The Billionaire’s Forgotten Bride のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 271 - チャプター 280

The penthouse used to be a castle. Now, it was a cage.Ethan pressed his nose against the cold glass of his bedroom window. He was on the seventy-first floor. Usually, this meant he was high enough to see the airplanes landing at LaGuardia, or the boats looking like bathtub toys on the river.But today, he wasn't looking up. He was looking down.Way down there, on the gray stripe of the street, were the ants.Hundreds of them. Black dots and blue dots swarming around the front door of the building. Sometimes they held up white squares—signs—but Ethan couldn't read them from up here. Sometimes they flashed lights, like tiny lightning bugs trapped in a jar."Ethan?"It was Uncle Marcus. He was sitting in the beanbag chair in the corner, reading a blueprint on a tablet. He had been there all week. He slept in the guest room. He said he was "supervising structural integrity," but Ethan knew that meant he was guarding the door."Get away from the window, kid," Marcus said. He didn't sound

The guest room in the penthouse cost more than Marcus’s entire college education.The sheets were Egyptian cotton. The mattress was memory foam that felt like sleeping on a cloud. The view of the East River was worth a few million dollars alone.But Marcus couldn't sleep.It wasn't the luxury that kept him awake. It was the silence.In Southie, silence meant peace. Here, in this glass tower, silence was heavy. It was the sound of a load-bearing beam groaning under too much weight.Marcus sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He was wearing an old gray t-shirt and boxers. He grabbed his jeans from the floor and pulled them on.He checked his watch. 2:14 AM.He walked out into the hallway. The penthouse was dim, lit by the recessed floor lights that guided the way like an airplane runway.To his left, the master bedroom door was closed. To his right, the study door was cracked open, spilling a sliver of blue light onto the hardwood.They were separated.Marcus had seen it

The living room of the penthouse usually looked like a page from Architectural Digest—sleek, minimalist, intimidatingly beige.Tonight, it looked like a craft store had exploded inside a bunker.Tissue paper flowers—lopsided, brightly colored, and taped with aggressive amounts of Scotch tape—bloomed from the backs of the Italian leather armchairs. Streamers made of toilet paper (Ethan’s innovation when they couldn't find crepe paper) draped from the chandelier like gothic cobwebs.Liam stood in the center of the chaos. He wasn't wearing a tuxedo. He was wearing a fresh white dress shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and dark trousers. He felt more nervous than he had on the day of his actual wedding in the Hamptons with five hundred guests."Stop fidgeting," Marcus said.His brother was leaning against the marble fireplace, holding a glass of water. Marcus hadn't changed out of his flannel shirt and work boots. He looked like exactly what he was: a builder inspecting a very fragil

The office of Voss International was a study in silence and chrome.Located on the fiftieth floor of a building that looked down on the Empire State Building, it was designed to make visitors feel small. The walls were glass. The floor was black marble. The desk was a slab of obsidian that seemed to absorb the light rather than reflect it.Isabella Voss sat behind the desk. She wore a suit of cream silk, severe and flawless. Her hands were folded on the cool stone surface.She was listening to failure."The forensic report has gained significant traction," said her Director of Public Relations, a man named Sterling (no relation to Marcus, just a coincidence of expensive names). "The narrative has shifted, Ms. Voss. The public sees Liam Cross as a victim of a smear campaign. The 'Not Guilty' verdict solidified it. The hashtags have turned."Isabella didn't blink. "Hashtags are for teenagers. What about the stock?""Stabilizing," said her CFO. "The announcement of the foundation... it w

The sound of the fetal monitor was a metronome counting down the seconds to disaster.Whoosh-whoosh. Whoosh-whoosh.It was too fast. 165 beats per minute. A tachycardia rhythm driven by the adrenaline flooding Aurora’s system.Aurora lay on her side, the position Dr. Evans had commanded, gripping the metal rail of the hospital bed that had been wheeled into the master bedroom. The IV line in her hand was cold, pumping magnesium sulfate into her veins to stop the contractions.It felt like liquid fire. It made her flushed, nauseous, and heavy."Dilated to three centimeters," Dr. Evans said quietly to the nurse. "She's thirty-four weeks. If we can't stop the labor pattern tonight, we're moving to the hospital for an emergency C-section."Aurora heard the words through a fog of heat and panic.Three centimeters.The door to the bedroom was open. In the hallway, Liam was pacing. He was on the phone, his voice a low, furious rumble. He was trying to stop the bleeding at Cross Industries, t