บททั้งหมดของ The Billionaire’s Vengeful Heiress: บทที่ 31 - บทที่ 40

The scheduled day for dinner at the Alfred mansion finally came.I had planned it carefully. Business associates as cover, enough familiar faces to make the evening feel like a simple networking dinner rather than anything more deliberate. Leo and Lydia were included and seated where I could watch them without appearing to. The goal was straightforward. Watch how Leo behaves when he believes he is safe. When he thinks the blackmail is behind him, the collaboration is moving forward, and the worst is finally over.Comfortable men reveal themselves. I was counting on it.My father sat at the head of the table the way he always has, power radiating off him quietly, the kind that never needs to announce itself. He made remarks throughout the meal with the unhurried ease of a man who knows exactly what he is doing and is enjoying every second of it."I've always believed," he said during the soup course, setting his spoon down without any change in expression, "that you can read a person'

Third person pov— AnthonyAnthony had been watching Leo Crane for the better part of three hours, and his patience was wearing thin. Not that anyone sitting at that table would know it. Years of boardrooms filled with men who hunted for weakness in every glance and every pause had made him exceptionally good at keeping his face still. Composed. Politely engaged. The kind of expression that gave the room absolutely nothing and cost him everything to maintain.He kept his eyes moving around the table the way a man does when he has nowhere particular to be and nothing pressing on his mind. But his attention had not left Leo Crane once since the soup course. He noticed the way Leo tilted his entire body toward Roberta whenever he spoke, angling himself in her direction like a plant turning toward light. The way Leo's laugh came a half-second too fast at everything she said — a little too smooth, a little too rehearsed. He noticed the way Leo's eyes drifted to her face the moment she look

Lydia had done her research the night before.Thoroughly.Old money going back three generations. Society pages as far back as she could scroll, Victoria Smith photographed at galas and charity boards and ribbon cuttings, always standing at the centre of rooms that mattered. Beautiful in the way that women with generational wealth are beautiful. Connected to every circle Lydia had spent years trying to crack open. The kind of woman whose presence at an event confirmed the event was worth attending in the first place.And then Anthony George. Three years ago. The tabloids had run the story for weeks. The public denial. Victoria checking into a facility. A love story Anthony had never agreed to be part of, told loudly and repeatedly by only one side.Lydia stood outside the penthouse building in the cool afternoon air and turned all of it over in her mind one last time. She knew exactly what she was walking into.She straightened her coat and went in anyway.Victoria opened the door her

Then she set the cup down.Something had been pressing at the back of her mind since she walked through the door. Something she had been carrying quietly, waiting for exactly the right moment to place on the table between them. She looked at Victoria steadily."There is one thing that cannot be faked," she said.Victoria looked at her. Said nothing. Just waited with that complete, focused stillness of hers.Lydia kept her voice calm. Measured. Almost clinical, the way she always sounded when she was most certain of something."Elena had an allergy to white lilies. A severe one. Not the manageable kind." She paused, letting the weight of the next words settle before she said them. "The kind that closes your throat in minutes. I know this because I used them against her myself once. I stood in that hospital room and watched what happened to her body."A beat of silence.Victoria's hands, folded neatly in her lap, went very still."You cannot train yourself out of that kind of reaction,"

Leo came home to a quiet apartment and the soft sound of Lydia turning a page. She was curled at one end of the sofa in the lamplight, a book open across her knees, her feet tucked underneath her. She looked up when he walked in, offered a small smile, and went back to reading. He poured himself a drink at the cabinet and stood at the window, watching the city below without really seeing any of it. Lydia kept her eyes on the page and did not look up again. She had been watching him for four days. Not obviously. Not in any way he would notice. But she had watched him come home each evening with that particular quality of stillness that only arrived when something was sitting heavily on a person and they had decided not to put it down. The way he lingered at windows. The way he poured his drink and did not finish it. The way his eyes moved to his phone and away again, like a man checking a wound. She knew about the garden. She had been there. Not in the garden itself, but close enou