All Chapters of From Prison To Power: The Ex-Wife's Vengeance : Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Chapter 31Valencia’s POVThe drive to the Rossi Manor felt like flying. For the first time in five years, the air in my lungs didn't taste like ash. My daughter, my Mia was just a few miles away. I could almost feel the weight of her small, warm body in my arms. I started making a list in my head, a mental map of a life I thought was gone forever.I’d take her to the coast. I’d teach her how to swim in water that wasn't tainted by the Rossi name. I’d read her the bedtime stories Antonio probably burned. I’d watch her sleep without a camera watching us both. At that moment, I wasn't the Ghost or the Empress. I was just a mother going home.I looked over at Silas. He was staring out the window, his jaw tight, but his silver eyes were softer than I’d ever seen them. He looked at me, seeing the raw, grateful hope on my face, and for a second, he looked almost wistful as if he were mourning a version of himself that could still feel that kind of light."Ten minutes out," Silas said, his

Chapter 33Valencia’s POVThe door of the SUV slammed with a sound that felt like a guillotine dropping on my soul. The silence that followed was heavy, vibrating with the ghost of Silas’s roar. Rain lashed against the glass, blurring the world outside into a chaotic watercolor of grey and black. I sat there for a heartbeat, my hands trembling in my lap. I could still feel the phantom heat of his body where he had been pinning me down. Maria was watching me, her eyes wide and wet, but I couldn't look at her. Not yet."Silas!" I gasped, the name tearing out of my throat like a sob.I didn't think. I lunged for the door handle he had just vacated. The cold night air hit me like a physical blow, smelling of wet asphalt and ozone. I stumbled out onto the slick pavement, my designer heels clicking frantically against the ground."Silas! Wait!"He was already twenty yards away, a tall, imposing silhouette cutting through the downpour. He didn't slow down. He didn't look back. His shoulder

Chapter 35Valencia’s POVThe morning air outside the Federal Courthouse was thick with the scent of rain-soaked pavement and the metallic tang of desperation. It was the perfect atmosphere for a funeral or a resurrection.I sat in the back of a charcoal-gray Mercedes Maybach, a car Jax had borrowed from a secondary Blackwood holding account before Silas could freeze the secondary biometric locks. I wasn't the woman who had cried on a bridge forty-eight hours ago. I wasn't even the tactical Ghost who had raided the Grand Excelsior.Today, I was the Titan of the East.I smoothed the fabric of my silk dress, a deep, bruised plum color that looked like a healing wound. My hair was no longer the flowing chestnut of Isabella or the tactical bob of the Ghost; it was a sleek, obsidian curtain that reached my waist, sharp enough to cut. I wore oversized dark glasses that cost more than the motel we’d just left, and my lips were painted a red so dark it was almost black."He’s coming out," Ja

Chapter 37Valencia’s POVThe silence in the dining room wasn't just quiet; it was a vacuum, sucking the oxygen out of the air until the only sound left was the ragged, rhythmic sobbing of the little girl on the floor. A shard of crystal, sharp as a diamond and twice as cold, rested against the silk of my thigh. Had I leaned an inch to the left, I’d be bleeding out on the Rossi marble.I didn’t move. I didn’t blink. I sat perfectly still, my spine a rod of iron, staring down at the heap of silk and dark curls that was my daughter. "Valencia, I…" Antonio’s voice broke. The seductive predator was gone, replaced by a man whose carefully constructed facade had just been demolished by a forty-pound whirlwind. He looked at the shattered glass, then at me, his face pale with a terror that had nothing to do with the IRS. "I am so incredibly sorry. She isn’t... she’s never this...""Isn't she?" I interrupted, my voice a low, dangerous purr. I finally reached down, picked up the shard of gla

Chapter 39Valencia’s POVThe interior of the Maybach was a sanctuary of chilled air and silence, but it couldn't drown out the phantom sensation of Antonio’s mouth on mine. Every time I closed my eyes, I felt that slick, scotch-scented desperation pressing against my lips. My skin felt like it was crawling with microscopic insects."V? You’re hyperventilating. Just a little," Jax’s voice was softer now, the adrenaline of the heist fading into genuine concern. "The money is safe. It’s bouncing through four different relays in the Baltics before it lands in your private offshore. You’re sixty million richer than you were an hour ago. Breathe.""I'm breathing, Jax," I snapped, though my chest felt tight. I reached for a bottle of sparkling water in the car's console and poured it over a linen cloth, scrubbing my lips until they were raw and stinging. "I just... I need to be clean. I need this night to be over.""We’re almost to the motel. Marcus is taking the long route to make sure no