All Chapters of my Billionaire’s baby : Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

Louis’s POV The war against Alexander Vance was a different beast. It wasn't fought in shadows or with silenced pistols. It was waged on stock tickers, in boardrooms, and across the glowing screens of every financial news network. It was public, and it was vicious. And for the first time, I was fighting with one hand tied behind my back—by my own choice, and by Sierra’s cold, clear mandate. *Fight him in the light.*Adrienne Cole was in her element. She crafted a narrative not of a defensive dinosaur, but of a visionary patriarch protecting his legacy and his family’s future from a opportunistic “tech vulture.” She leaked selective financials showing the robust, sustainable growth of the Pacific Rim resorts. She arranged profiles of the long-term employees whose livelihoods Vance’s hostile bid threatened. She made it a story of heart versus algorithm.My weapon, as Sierra had implicitly suggested, was her. Not her directly, but her story. Savarina’s explosive success was a perfect,

Louis’s POVThe war room had a different energy this time. The scent was not just of coffee and tension, but of vanilla and jasmine from the lotion Sierra used. She sat at the conference table, not in one of the leather armchairs by the window reserved for observers, but at the heart of it, between Marcus and our lead counsel, David Chen. A tablet was before her, her fingers flying across it, pulling up sales data, brand sentiment metrics, timelines of the cyber intrusion. She was not a vulnerable liability to be protected. She was a commanding asset, laying out the battlefield of her own domain.I watched her from the head of the table, a strange, aching pride twisting with the old, familiar despair. This was the woman who had stood in a crumbling bakery, covered in flour. This was the queen who had faced down a ballroom. And now, this was the CEO, coolly detailing how Alexander Vance’s attempted theft had cost Savarina “approximately two-point-three million in projected first-quart

Louis’s POVWaiting was its own form of torture. I had given her the knife and was standing still, waiting to see where she would plunge it. Into the distance between us, or into the heart of this shared space I could no longer call a home.For three days, the house was a museum of suspended animation. Sierra moved through it quietly, always thinking, always weighing. She spent hours with Katie, watching her with an intensity that felt like memorization. She toured the Savarina flagship twice, as if saying goodbye. She said nothing to me. The silence was a bell jar, and under it, I was slowly suffocating.I threw myself into the logistics of either outcome. If she stayed, I would restructure the west wing entirely, give her a fully separate apartment within the house—a literal wall to match the metaphorical one. If she left, I worked with Marcus to triple the security detail for European operations, vetted staff for the Paris apartment, and drafted the legal documents granting her au

Louis’s POVThe next seventy-two hours were a blur of grim, necessary transactions. The police, the FBI, the endless questions. My lawyers and Adrienne formed a seamless wall, channeling the narrative. Victor Hale, a disgraced and unhinged former associate, seeking revenge. A tragic, violent end to his own making. The heroic, coordinated rescue by private security working in tandem with law enforcement. The brave mother who ran into the line of fire for her child.The press ate it up. The story had everything: a billionaire, a kidnapping, a maternal lioness, a clean resolution. My “confession” broadcast was framed as a desperate, clever ruse to buy time. Our stock barely twitched. If anything, the brand gained a layer of gritty, resilient legend.Through it all, Sierra was a pillar of fierce, quiet competence. She gave one brief, tearful statement on the steps of our home, clinging to my arm, her voice breaking just enough to be authentic, her gaze steady enough to show strength. The

Sierra’s POVThe plan was a delicate, ugly thing. We called it “Operation Sandcastle.” The objective: bury Victor Hale’s reference to “the other one” under a landslide of more salacious, yet legally harmless, speculation about his mental state. We weren’t erasing the thread; we were fraying it into nonsense.Louis’s network produced a discreet, middle-aged private investigator named Irina. Her specialty was “psychological landscaping”—creating a believable pattern of instability. Over the next 72 hours, anonymous tips would begin to reach Detective Alvarez’s desk: records from a defunct private clinic suggesting Victor had been treated for delusional attachment disorder; testimonials from former army buddies (well-compensated for their fuzzy memories) about his habit of inventing elaborate grudges; a digital trail of paranoid forum posts (created by one of Louis’s infosec people) under a username linked to an old email of Victor’s.It was all smoke. But smoke, in sufficient quantity,