Semua Bab Claimed By One Billionaire, Saved By Another : Bab 21 - Bab 29

SLYVIE’S POVThe nightmare came again but this time it was worse.I ran through a corridor that had no end, the walls narrowing with every step, the air cold and tasting of damp earth and something older, something I couldn't name. The footsteps behind me were gaining. Fast and rhythmic and patient, the way a hunter's footsteps are patient, because the hunter already knows how it ends."Stop running."The voice came from everywhere, from the walls, from inside my own chest. I pushed harder, my lungs burning, my bare feet hitting the floor with a slapping desperation that echoed back at me like mockery. A door appeared at the end of the corridor and I threw myself at it, wrenched it open and then there was nothing. A void. Pure and absolute and waiting.But I stepped inside anyway and the door slammed behind me like a gunshot, and then the hands came gripping my shoulders, hard and suddenly he—A scream tore from my throat as my body jolted upright in the bed. The blankets tangled ar

The cathedral smelled of white roses and something older — candlewax and cold stone and the particular stillness of a room that had been holding its breath for hours.I stood at the altar with my hands locked behind my back. It was a habit I'd developed somewhere between my first boardroom and my thirtieth hostile acquisition — the posture of a man who does not fidget, who does not betray himself with his hands. The orchestra was playing something sweeping and inevitable, the kind of melody designed to tell you how to feel before you'd had time to decide. Behind me, I could hear the soft mechanical click of camera lenses repositioning, the journalists settling into their good angles.I had not slept. That was a fact I kept to myself, the way I kept most facts — filed, noted, not discussed.The delay had cost me. One unattended wedding and a kidnapped bride—the tabloids had sharpened their teeth further. *Where Has Sylvie Been?* Then *The Bride Who Vanished.* Then something more pointe

SYLVIE POVI didn't know how I got there.That was the first thing that came into my mind. There was no hallway, no threshold, no moment I could point to and say “there, that's when I chose this.”Just the door and the sudden quietness around me, the way certain things arrive without warning and you understand immediately they have been coming for a long time.I immediately walked into the room and I knew it was his. Not from memory because I obviously had none but from something that lived buried in memory, in the body itself. The low amber light pooling across dark furniture. The smell underneath everything, wood and heat and something I had no language for yet but recognized anyway, the way you recognize a voice you've never consciously heard before.And the wall.I couldn't stop looking at the wall.Iron rings at varying heights. A length of rope coiled over a low leather bench, patient as something sleeping. A folded strip of black leather. A short-handled crop. Other things I h

The silence in the dining room was thick enough to choke on. I watched him push his plate aside a small, final gesture that signaled his morning was already moving on, leaving me behind in the dust.He reached for his phone, his thumb swiping across the screen with an efficiency that made my stomach twist. The breakfast was a problem he had "solved" for the morning, and now he was onto the next."So," I said, my voice cutting through the quiet like a dull blade.He didn't look up immediately, he just stared at his phone while typing a message or command, and then slowly raised his eyes. "Yes?""What am I supposed to do today?" I asked him while staring at my plate.He set the phone face down on the table, giving me his full attention. "What do you mean, Sylvie?""I mean—" I gestured vaguely at the high ceilings, the silent maids, the perfect, stagnant air of the house. "What is the plan for me? Today, Tomorrow or Every day after that because so far, what I've done is to be at the libr

KAEL'S POV"What are you doing here?"The question snaps out of me the second the front doors hiss shut.I didn't slow down or hesitate. With Sylvie wrapped in my arms and her fingers bunched into the fabric of my shirt, I surged toward the stairs.I feel the hitch in her breathing against my neck. Every step pulls a sharp inhale from her—the pain in her ankle but the heat of her skin is a distraction I can’t afford; the moment I spot him, my world narrows to a single point of cold, hard focus.He’s leaning against the sideboard in the foyer, cradling a crystal tumbler like he’s been there for years or he's even welcomed here, and he'd gotten past my security. Thomas, my stepbrother.My grip on Sylvie tightens just enough to feel the solid reality of her against the sudden ghost of my past. Thomas straightens, his eyes traveling over us with a slow, predatory leisure. He lingers on the way I’m holding her, his gaze lingering and tracing the line of her legs, a lopsided smirk spreadin