All Chapters of The CEO’s Secret Triplets: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

The hum of Leo’s ventilator was the only sound in the room after Bella finished speaking. Dante didn't move. He stood by the nursery door, his hand still resting on the frame, his shadow stretching across the soft, animal-patterned rug. The request—the demand—was so far outside the parameters he’d built for this evening that for a moment, the executive gears in his head simply ground to a halt.​"You want my seat," Dante said. His voice was flat, devoid of the shock he actually felt. "You realize that seat isn't just a chair at a table. It carries the fiduciary liability for forty thousand employees and three trillion dollars in managed assets."​"I’m an auditor, Dante," Bella replied. She didn't look away. She stood next to Leo’s bed, her hand resting protectively on the railing. "I know exactly what the liability is. I also know that as long as you hold that seat, you are bound by the bylaws to act in the best interest of the shareholders. If the shareholders decide that my son is a

The door didn’t click when Dante closed it. He was too precise for that, too practiced in the art of leaving a room without leaving a trace. Bella stood by Leo’s bed, the silence rushing back in to fill the space he had occupied. It was a heavy, suffocating quiet that made the rhythmic wheeze of the ventilator sound like a clock ticking down to an explosion.He hadn't answered her. He hadn’t said no.She looked down at Leo’s small hand, the skin so pale it was almost translucent. The "Recycle" directive. She had found the term buried in the digital footnotes of the Geneva medical archives months ago. To a layperson, it sounded like an environmental protocol. To an auditor, it was a liability purge. It meant that if the research subjects—the embryos that became her children—did not meet the threshold for viability, the investment was to be liquidated. Terminated. Erased.Dante had authorized the funding. That was a matter of record. But had he authorized the purge?She walked to the wi

The solarium was a structure of glass and white iron, a transparent cage that sat at the far end of the east wing. It was filled with tropical ferns and rare orchids that looked too perfect to be real, their scents mingling into something cloying and artificial. Bella stood at the glass doors for a long beat, the birth certificate folded tightly and tucked into the hidden pocket of her dress. Her hand was steady, but her skin felt like it was humming with a low-voltage current.Julian Blackwood was seated in a high-backed wicker chair, his silver-headed cane resting against his knee. He didn't look like a villain. He looked like a grandfather enjoying the afternoon sun, a tray of untouched tea on the table beside him."You're five minutes early, Isabella," Julian said, his voice a dry rasp that barely carried over the rustle of the palms. "Punctuality is a trait of the desperate or the disciplined. I’ve always wondered which one you were."Bella walked into the room, her heels clickin

Dante didn’t try to push past her. He stopped two inches from the door, his chest nearly brushing Bella’s shoulder. The heat coming off him was the only thing in the room that felt alive. His phone screen was still glowing with the gate alert, a beacon of Julian’s arrival that seemed to pulse in time with the heavy silence of the library.​"The order," Bella said, her voice low and tight. "How did he get a guardianship order signed by a judge on a Sunday afternoon?"​Dante looked over her head, his eyes tracking the shadows in the hallway beyond the glass panels of the door. "He didn't go to a judge. He went to the probate master for the Blackwood Trust. In New York, the Trust operates as its own sovereign legal entity for the first forty-eight hours of a dispute. Julian is invoking the emergency succession protocol. He’s claiming that since we merged our assets, we’ve created a conflict of interest that requires an independent tie-breaker for the children’s welfare."​"A tie-breaker,

Dante didn’t drop the digital pen. He held it an inch above the glass, his hand perfectly still, though his eyes remained fixed on the notification that had just upended his understanding of his own history. The accusation against his mother was a jagged blade cutting through the center of his resolve. If Evelyn had been the one to authorize the extraction—the one who had effectively sold Bella’s silence using his father’s name—then the rot in this house went deeper than corporate ambition. It was maternal."Dante?" Bella’s voice was sharper now. She stepped closer, trying to see the screen, but he tilted the tablet away. It wasn't about the secret anymore; it was about the timing. Julian was in the foyer, the SEC was circling, and now, a ghost from his own bloodline was whispering through an encrypted channel."My mother," Dante said, the words sounding like they were being dragged over gravel. "The message says she signed the authorization. Not my father."Bella went still. She didn