Semua Bab Healing with the monster : Bab 21 - Bab 30

The safe house wasn’t a De Luca mansion. There were no marble floors, no gold-leafed ceilings, and no cameras hidden in the vents. It was a modest stone cottage on the far northern edge of the city, tucked behind a wall of ancient oaks and a high perimeter fence that hummed with a silent, electric charge.It was a sanctuary, but it felt like a waiting room.I stood at the small kitchen window, my hands wrapped around a mug of tea that had long since gone cold. Outside, the city was just a distant orange glow on the horizon, a memory of the nightmare I had escaped. Here, the only sound was the wind through the trees and the rhythmic clack-clack-clack of Leo’s wooden blocks on the rug."Mommy, look! I built a mountain!"I turned, forcing a smile that didn't quite reach my eyes. Leo was sitting in a patch of afternoon sun, his face bright with a focus I hadn't seen in years. Without the sterile blue light of the clinic, his skin looked healthier—more like a five-year-old and less like a

The silence in the safe house was different tonight. It wasn't the peaceful quiet of the woods; it was the heavy, pressurized stillness that comes right before a storm breaks.I sat on the floor next to Leo, watching him sleep. His small chest rose and fell in a perfect, innocent rhythm. He didn't know that three hundred miles away, in a reinforced courtroom, a judge was currently reading the words that would decide the rest of our lives.The laptop on the kitchen counter chimed. A single, encrypted notification from Silas: GUILTY ON ALL COUNTS.A sob of pure, jagged relief caught in my throat. Josh De Luca—the man who had treated my body like a playground and my son like a lab rat—was officially a ward of the state. He was no longer a prince. He was a number."Elara."Julian’s voice came from the porch, sharp and urgent. He didn't wait for permission this time; he burst through the screen door, his face pale, his hand already gripped tight around the butt of his sidearm."We have to

The headquarters of the De Luca Research Foundation didn't just look like a building; it looked like a monument to arrogance. Sixty stories of black glass and steel rising over the Lagos skyline, built on the broken lives of women like me.I stood at the entrance, the humid city air thick with the scent of rain and exhaust. I wasn't wearing the hospital gown from the clinic or the borrowed sweater from the safe house. I was in a tailored, ivory-white power suit Silas had commissioned, my hair pulled back in a sleek, obsidian bun. I looked like a woman who had never known fear—even if my palms were damp."You don't have to do this alone, Elara," Silas whispered, stepping out of the armored SUV behind me. He looked like the "Gilded Shark" again, but his eyes were fixed on me with a protective intensity that made my heart steady."I’m not alone, Silas," I said, looking down at Leo, who was holding my hand. He looked like a miniature prince in his navy blazer, his eyes wide as he looked a

The Federal Medical Centre in Owerri was quiet now, the night air filled with the distant sound of a generator and the rhythmic chirping of crickets. Silas was outside on the balcony, his silhouette a dark shadow against the city lights as he argued with the Vane legal team over the phone.I sat by Julian’s bed. He was asleep, his breathing shallow, his hand still loosely curled around Leo’s wooden block.I picked up his charred tactical jacket, which the nurse had left on a chair. It smelled of smoke, burnt pine, and iron. As I moved it, I felt something stiff inside the lining. I pulled out a small, soot-stained envelope. On the front, in Julian’s precise, medical handwriting, was a single word: ELARA.My heart hammered against my ribs. I tore it open. Inside was a lab report from five years ago—dated three months before I was taken to the clinic—and a handwritten note."Elara, if you are reading this, I am likely gone. You think I am the architect of your prison, but I was the one

The rain finally broke over Owerri. It hammered against the corrugated roof of the hospital wing, a deafening roar that drowned out the hum of the monitors. Inside the ward, the silence was even louder.Silas stood over Julian’s bed, his shadow stretching long and jagged across the floor. He wasn't the "Gilded Shark" of the boardroom anymore; he was a man who had just found out his entire family history was a lie constructed by a madman."You let me believe he was Josh’s," Silas said, his voice a low, dangerous vibration that cut through the sound of the rain. "You let me treat my own flesh and blood like the seed of a demon. Why, Julian?"Julian didn't look up from the wooden block in his hand. The flickering fluorescent light caught the silver of his bandages. "Because if you knew the truth, Silas, you would have taken him. You would have turned Leo into a 'Vane.' You would have put him in a suit, taught him to crush competitors, and polished him until he was as cold and hard as you