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Todos los capítulos de my Billionaire’s baby : Capítulo 31 - Capítulo 40

96 Capítulos

31

Sierra’s POV A change in Louis was a subtle shift in the atmosphere of our home. It was a silence that was too deep, a look in his eyes that drifted to a middle distance, even when he was playing with Katie on the rug. He was present, but partitioned. A part of him was locked away in a room I couldn’t enter.He kissed me with the same passion, held me with the same possessiveness, but his mind was elsewhere. I’d catch him staring at his phone, not reading, just staring, as if waiting for a verdict to come through.“Is everything okay with the new hotel acquisition?” I asked two days after his mysterious visitor, trying to sound casual as I sorted through fabric swatches for the gala’s decor.“Hmm? Yes. Fine. Just fine.” He didn’t look up from his tablet.Fine. The word was a wall. I knew better than to push. When Louis Trevane built walls, they were made of steel and consequences.That night, after he’d fallen into a fitful sleep, I lay awake, the silence pressing in. My phone was on

32

Louis’s POV The confirmation arrived at dawn, as the first grey light crept across the bedroom ceiling. A single word on the encrypted channel, followed by a data packet of fabricated but flawless police reports, witness statements from nonexistent bystanders, and meteorological data supporting the “icy conditions” narrative.***Terminated.***I read the word on my phone’s screen, the glow etching the letters into the dark room. A life, ended. A threat, neutralized. A transaction, complete. There was no feeling attached to it. It was a line item on a balance sheet. The part of me that should have felt horror was buried too deep, armored by a decade of colder calculations and the absolute priority that was Sierra and Katie, sleeping beside me.I slipped from bed carefully. Sierra was curled on her side, her breathing deep but not entirely peaceful. Her eyelids fluttered. She knew. The realization had settled between us last night, unspoken but palpable, coloring every touch, every si

33

**Chapter 33 – Sierra’s POV**The quiet in the house had a new texture. It wasn't the peaceful quiet after a storm. It was the held breath before a landslide. Louis moved through the days with a focused intensity, but his eyes kept drifting to unseen horizons. He spent more time in his study with the door locked, the low murmur of his voice through the wood more frequent.He thought he was protecting me by keeping me in the dark. But darkness was where I learned to see now.While Katie was at her afternoon play therapy session, a new routine to help her adjust to her "big life changes," I sat in the library with my laptop. I typed a single word into a private browser window.Monaco.The results were a flood of glittering travelogues and yacht races. I added a year. 2012. The images shifted to parties, paparazzi shots of a younger, harder Louis, his eyes glassy with a boredom that looked like contempt. I scrolled past images of celebrities and socialites.Then I found a grainy, archive

34

Louis’s POVMidnight found us in the war room—my study, now transformed. Sierra sat curled in one of the leather armchairs, wrapped in a cashmere throw, her face pale but alert. Marcus stood by the screens, pulling up files on Alistair Finch. Adrienne Cole had arrived within twenty minutes of my call, her sharp bob perfect, not a trace of sleep about her. My mother, having anticipated the call, entered last, a silent queen taking her seat at the round table.“Finch is a bloodhound with a byline,” Adrienne began, without preamble. Her tablet glowed in the dark room. “He smells blood in the water. The ‘tragedies’ around us have his attention. He’s not interested in the charity fluff piece. That was his opener. His real target is the Monaco incident. He’s been quietly requesting old passenger manifests for charter yachts from that season.”“How do we know this?” Sierra asked, her voice quiet in the hum of electronics.“Because I pay two of his researchers,” Adrienne said flatly. “His dig

35

Sierra’s POVThe gala was a symphony of light and lies. A thousand crystals in the chandeliers threw rainbows over the sea of black ties and gowns worth more than my old bakery made in a year. I moved through it on Louis’s arm, a smile fixed on my face, my hand resting lightly over his, a portrait of serene, conquered joy.Inside, I was a live wire. Every flash of a camera felt like a sniper’s scope. Every unfamiliar face in the crowd was a potential Finch, or worse, another ghost from Monaco. I performed my role with a precision that would have made Nia weep with pride. I laughed at the right moments, listened with apparent fascination to tedious stories about yacht lengths and art auctions, and deflected subtle probes about “adjusting to the spotlight” with graceful, bland humility.Louis was my anchor and my mirror. His hand on the small of my back was a constant, grounding pressure. His smiles were brief but genuine when they touched me, though his eyes constantly scanned the room

36

Louis’s POVThe gala ended in a blur of handshakes and hollow congratulations. We played our parts until the last guest departed, until the final camera flash died. The moment the grand doors closed, the performance dropped like a curtain, leaving backstage wreckage.Sierra walked upstairs without a word. She didn’t look at me. The space between us, usually filled with heat or understanding, was now a frozen tundra. I followed, my dress shoes loud on the marble in the echoing silence.She went to the nursery first, as she always did. I lingered in the hallway, watching through the cracked door as she bent over Katie’s sleeping form, her silhouette a study in tenderness. She kissed our daughter’s forehead, her hand lingering on the small, rising and falling chest. She was drawing strength from her, fortifying herself against me.When she finally emerged, she walked past me as if I were another piece of statuary. She entered our bedroom and went straight to her dressing table, beginning

37

Sierra’s POVThe house the next day was a tomb dressed in sunlight. Katie, sensing the wrongness in the air, was clingy and quiet. I kept her close, reading the same picture book three times in a row, using her warm, solid weight as an anchor against the dread pulling me under.Louis was a ghost in his own home. He moved from his study to the security office and back, his face a closed door. We didn’t speak. The silence was a third presence, heavy and accusing.Marcus found her by mid-morning. Claudia Rossi. She was staying in a modest, faded hotel near the airport, the kind of place for people passing through, not putting down roots. She had a return ticket to Rome for the day after tomorrow. She had come, delivered her message, and planned to leave. She wasn’t a strategist. She was just a woman who had finally reached her limit.Louis’s lawyers worked with terrifying speed. By lunch, a document was ready. It wasn’t a lawsuit or a threat. It was an offer. A staggeringly generous tru

38

Louis’s POVThe study door clicked shut, sealing me in a tomb of my own making. The address for the Villa delle Rose lay on my desk like an indictment. Sierra’s words echoed in the silent room. *We are the monsters here.*She was right. But monsters survived. Monsters protected their own.My phone felt heavy as a gun in my hand. I opened the encrypted channel. The message window was blank, a void waiting to be filled with a sentence of death. My thumb hovered over the keys.A memory flashed, unbidden. Sierra last night, on the chaise, her back to me. The curve of her shoulder in the moonlight. The absolute trust she had placed in me when I promised not to cross this line. I was about to incinerate that trust. If she ever found out, what remained of us would turn to ash.But if I didn’t do this, and Claudia Rossi spoke—to Finch, to anyone—the life Sierra loved, the future I’d built for Katie, would crumble anyway. It was a choice between destroying her faith in me or destroying her wo

39

Sierra’s POVThe morning dawned with a silence so complete it felt like the house itself was holding its breath. I had not slept. I had lain on the chaise, staring at the pattern of moonlight shifting across the ceiling, feeling the new, terrible knowledge settle into my bones like a terminal cold.Claudia Rossi was dead. Louis had killed her. Not with his hands, but with his will, and his money, and the monster he kept on a leash. The man I loved was a murderer. The father of my child had ordered the death of a woman whose only crime was loving her broken sister too much to be bought.When the grey light finally came, I moved through the routine like an automaton. Shower. Dress. The clothes felt like a costume. I avoided the bedroom, where Louis still lay, a stranger in our bed.Downstairs, the kitchen was too bright. Katie chattered about her dream, a nonsensical, happy story involving flying pancakes. I made the pancakes. I poured the syrup. I smiled at her. The disconnect between

40

Sierra’s POVThree months was long enough for a new routine to calcify into a kind of life. We were the picture of a powerful, loving family. The media dubbed us “The Trevanes: America’s Second Chance Royalty.” Savarina’s flagship location opened to rave reviews and hour-long lines. I gave interviews about resilience and baked delicate, perfect lemon tarts that belied the sourness in my soul. I was the philanthropic baker queen, and I played the part with an Academy Award-worthy detachment.At home, we were diplomats from opposing, frosty nations. We discussed schedules. We co-parented Katie with a careful, coordinated efficiency that was utterly joyless. We slept in the same bed, a vast, cold acre of linen between us. Sometimes, in the deepest part of the night, I’d feel his hand brush against mine, a tentative, aching question. I never took it. The connection had been severed. What remained was a business partnership with a shared, precious asset.Louis buried himself in work, pursu

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