บททั้งหมดของ Romance Of Betrayal : บทที่ 21 - บทที่ 30

The moment his car drove away from the mansion the place felt huge and empty. I stood by the window for a time staring at the dark road wondering if he would come back. The night was really dark. It made everything invisible quickly. Even the sound of the car engine was gone in a seconds leaving only silence behind.I locked the balcony door like he asked me to. Then I checked the bedroom door the windows and the locks. I was moving slowly. I could not stand still. The housekeepers had gone to their rooms. Most of his security people were outside the main building. The hallways inside were long and not well lit with shadows on the marble floors.Every little sound seemed loud tonight.The clock in the living room was ticking like footsteps. The wind outside was making the trees move. It sounded like people whispering. I hated that my mind was filling the silence with thoughts.I went to the kitchen poured myself a glass of water and tried to breathe. The glass was shaking a little in

I could still feel the stranger's grip on my wrist even though he was no longer there. The mansion was secure again, the lights were steady and his men were stationed at every entrance.. I did not feel safe, not really. The air felt charged like a storm was waiting to break. He stood by the window phone pressed to his ear giving orders in a voice that had no emotion. He was a man the world feared, cold, controlled and ruthless.. I had seen something else in him tonight. I had seen fear in his eyes. When he finally ended the call the room fell silent again. He did not turn to face me. His shoulders were stiff and his posture straight. I could sense the storm inside him. "You should rest, " he said without looking at me. "I cannot, " I replied. This made him turn to face me. Our eyes locked across the room. The distance between us suddenly felt unbearable. "I told you to stay, " he said quietly. "I heard the door, " I explained. "You were not supposed to come down, " he said, hi

(Ethan – POV) I was at my desk by five in the morning. Not in the office I had moved my primary operations back to the estate's private workspace after the hospital incident. Blackwood Global's building was still functioning, still staffed, still putting out the steady hum of a company that wouldn't buckle under pressure. But the real work was happening here now. Where the walls were mine and the cameras were mine and the air itself carried no hidden variables. Marcus, my head of security, sat across from me with a coffee he hadn't touched. He was a former military intelligence man, compact and quiet, with the kind of face that didn't give anything away under any circumstances. He was one of the very few people I trusted completely and the only reason I trusted him was because I had tested him. Twice. Years ago. He had passed both times without knowing they were tests. "Talk me through the breach," I said. Marcus set down the coffee. "They came in through the drainage access on

Ethan POVMeridian Pacific Advisory had been dissolved two years ago. It had existed for four years before that. During its operational period it had made forty seven job offers to individuals who had, at some point, intersected with my professional life. Former employees. Contractors. Vendors. And now, apparently, Sophia.Not forty seven random intersections. Forty seven deliberate ones.Priya had the full picture by nine that evening. She spread it across the third screen like a diagram of a disease the way it had spread, the nodes it had touched, the ones that had accepted the offers and the ones that hadn't.Of the forty-seven, eleven had accepted.Of those eleven, four were currently employed at Blackwood Global.I sat with that number for a moment. Four people. Inside my company right now. Placed there not by accident and not by Daniel alone .Daniel had been in place years before this network was built. These four were more recent. A second layer. Insurance, in case the first l

(Ethan – POV)I had been avoiding Daniel on purpose.Not because I was afraid of the conversation. Because I needed it to happen on my terms, at the moment of my choosing, with every possible piece of information already in my hand. You don't have the conversation that ends a war until you are ready for the war to end.I was almost ready.Priya had confirmed the Victoria Leung data trail. She had also, by the following morning, traced forty one of the forty two million dollars directly back to a holding company that Castlepoint Ventures' former legal counsel ,a man named Barry Thome had incorporated on Elena Marsh's behalf in 2016. The forty-second million was still moving through layers, but forty-one was enough.The forged documents were next. Marcus Webb the forensic analyst, not my security chief had been working on them for thirty-six hours without sleeping. He called me at seven in the morning to tell me what he had found."The documents are very good," he said. "Whoever made