All Chapters of The Night Before Christmas: Chapter 131 - Chapter 140

Desmond’s POVBy the following morning, the attack had evolved beyond manipulation and entered something far more dangerous, because the moment a campaign succeeds in destabilising a person’s sense of self, every external pressure attached to it begins multiplying naturally, requiring no further force from the original architect beyond occasional direction.And Aviel understood that better than most.I had to return to Valencia and managed my other business remotely. All the Whitmore businesses were collapsing faster than the speed of light. Aria's mother was nowhere to be found, and Elliot was still in the hospital recovering. Aria is taking care of Hailey, alongside preventing the situation from getting to her. My mum's location was still unknown, but I know once a mafia leader, she will be back. I have to save the family I just found.The operations floor was quieter than usual when I stepped into it shortly after dawn, though not because activity had slowed. If anything, movement

Aria’s POV"At what point does defending me start damaging you too?”I ask after analysing the whole situation. The attack was also on Desmond, who was defending me."Aria, you are my wife, legally. Hailey is our precious daughter. It's my duty to protect you and our daughter. My family. No matter what happens, I don't want to lose you or Hailey."His words unsettled me, bringing tears to my eyes. I turned them away quickly.He drew closer and pulled me into his arms. The move broke something in me, and my tears came pouring like rain. "Everything will be alright. We just need time," he consoled.By morning, the world had already decided who I was becoming.I realised it before I even opened my eyes fully.My phone had been vibrating intermittently against the bedside table for nearly twenty minutes, the low mechanical hum cutting through the stillness of the bedroom with relentless persistence, while somewhere beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows, the city moved beneath a grey sky th

Desmond’s POVThe most dangerous enemies were rarely the loudest ones.They were the ones patient enough to let pressure travel through systems naturally, patient enough to stand behind the fracture instead of creating it visibly, until eventually the structure collapsed beneath its own uncertainty while everyone searched for damage in the wrong direction.And for the first time since Evans Grant’s death, I stopped defending.And started hunting.By morning, Valencia no longer felt like a company stabilising itself after crisis; it felt like a structure quietly preparing for internal war. The operations floor remained active, screens still alive with endless streams of legal updates, financial movement, media tracking, behavioural analytics, and internal communication patterns, but the atmosphere beneath it had shifted completely.Nobody trusted the silence anymore.Not after the archive discovery.I stood near the central display with my attention fixed on the access timelines Daniel

Desmond’s POVThe most effective traps were never built around force. They were built around patience.By morning, the atmosphere inside Valencia had changed again, though this time the shift no longer felt defensive. The panic that had quietly spread through departments over the previous days still existed beneath the surface, but now something else had begun replacing it.Observation.People had stopped asking what was happening.Now they were trying to figure out who was responsible.And that was exactly where I needed the institution to be.The operations room remained active long before sunrise, the low glow of overlapping screens reflecting against dark glass while reports, internal movement logs, communication patterns, and archive access trails continued updating in controlled silence across the central displays.Kingsley stood near the far console reviewing segmented distribution lists while Daniel monitored behavioural timing comparisons from the previous forty-eight hours.

Desmond’s POVThe first sign that powerful systems were losing control was never panic. It was inconsistency.By the beginning of the following week, the pressure surrounding Whitmore and Valencia operations had not disappeared, but something subtle inside the pattern had started changing.Aviel’s precision was slipping.Not publicly enough for outsiders to notice.But enough for me to see it.The operations floor remained active beneath the low glow of overlapping security displays while segmented intelligence reports continued flowing across isolated internal networks that no longer resembled the original Whitmore infrastructure.Because over the past seventy-two hours, we had quietly dismantled the pathways Aviel had relied on for years.Not aggressively.Surgically.Archive redundancies had been removed entirely.Executive routing permissions had been rebuilt from the ground up.Legacy communication structures were isolated into monitored channels.Sensitive operational intelligen