جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 30

Lina’s POV Darkness swallowed the hallway completely. For half a second, no one moved, everyone became still, even the air. Suddenly everything exploded. “Backup power, now!” someone shouted. Boots thundered across marble. Radios crackled. The emergency lights flickered on in strips of dull red along the floor, turning everyone into moving shadows. Carlino didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. “West wing,” he said, already walking. Fast. Controlled. Deadly calm. Damien fell into step beside him, barking orders into his phone. “Seal external exits. Nobody in or out. I want eyes on every camera feed we still have.” “I thought this house was a fortress, like you all claimed,” I muttered, keeping pace. Carlino didn’t look at me. “It is.” “Then someone just walked through your walls.” His jaw tightened, but he didn’t slow down. We turned the corner toward the west corridor, my corridor. Two guards were already there, guns drawn, sweeping the hallway. “Report,” Carlino ordered

Carlino’s POV The second explosion didn’t come. That was worse. Smoke drifted faintly past the tall windows at the end of the corridor, gray against the night. Not thick. Not destructive. Controlled. A message, not an attack. He was showing me he could reach us. “Status!” I barked as we moved fast through the hall. “Perimeter breach confirmed!” a guard shouted from the stairwell. “West wing cameras are down again — total blackout.” Of course they were. Lina was already ahead of two armed men, heading toward her corridor. I caught her arm. “Don’t,” I said. Her eyes flashed. “That’s my wing.” “That’s exactly why you’re not going.” “I’m not hiding while someone walks through our house.” “Our house?” I repeated, low and sharp. “This isn’t pride, Lina. This is strategy.” She didn’t pull away, but she didn’t soften either. “If he’s here for me, running won’t stop him.” “He’s not here for you,” I said. “He’s here for me. You’re just a leverage.” A beat of silence. She hated th

Carlino’s POV By the time we sealed the estate, I trusted no one. Not the guards on the gates. Not the men in the control room. Not even the ones who had bled for me before. Damien’s absence sat in the air like smoke you couldn’t see but still inhaled and tasted. “Lock internal comms to close the loop,” I told Niel as we walked. “No outgoing signals without my word.” “You think he left backdoors?” Niel asked. “I think he stood beside me for eight years while hiding the truth.” My jaw tightened. We turned down the private corridor that led to the older wing of the house, the part built before the expansion, before the empire got bigger than the walls that held it. Before my father handed me the throne. Two guards stood outside his study. They looked nervous. Good. “Anyone that has gone in?” I asked. “No, boss,” one said quickly. “Just your father. He has been there since he and Donna left site B.” They didn’t hesitate. I pushed the door open without knocking. My father sat b

Lina’s POV The drive back to the estate was completely silent. Carlino sat beside me, still and unreadable. Cold. Numb. His eyes were fixed on nothing, like the world outside the window no longer existed. I’d had my chance to leave. To escape this hellhole. To walk away from his crumbling, rotting world. But I didn’t take it. I couldn’t. Something pulled me back to him. To this life. I didn’t have a name for it, but whatever it was, it was strong enough to keep me bound. I turned my head, studying his face. Dark circles shadowed his eyes. His hair was disheveled, completely out of place. His jaw was tight, his expression carved from stone. Why was I looking at him this closely? I had no answer for that either. I didn’t know how he was still sitting this straight after everything that had happened in just a few days. Billions of euros lost. His most trusted right-hand man betrays him to stand beside his enemy. His empire fracturing right beneath his feet, power slipping through

Lina’s POV The new house had no echo. That was the first thing I noticed the morning after we arrived. No long marble corridors swallowing footsteps. No distant voices carried through chandeliers and stone. Just quiet walls, soft lighting, and the faint hum of security systems hidden behind clean architecture. It felt less like a palace. I stood close to the kitchen island, watching Bella argue with a coffee machine like it had personally offended her. “This thing has too many buttons,” she muttered. “It’s smarter than the old one,” I said. She pressed something. The machine hissed angrily. “I don’t need my coffee to connect to satellites,” she shot back. I almost smiled. Footsteps entered the space. Not hurriedly. Not heavy. It was just controlled and calm. Carlino. Bella straightened instantly. “Signor.” He gave a brief nod. His eyes moved once around the kitchen — exits, windows, reflections in metal surfaces. Always calculating. Always aware. Then they landed on me.