The Billionaire Who Ruined My Wedding のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 61 - チャプター 70

For one suspended second, nobody reacted.Not because we did not hear her.Because the sentence landed too precisely to allow movement.I’m the woman your daughter calls mother.Rain pushed through the shattered hospital window in thin cold streams, carrying broken glass across the white floor. The emergency lights flickered again, making every face in the room look unfinished, unstable, dangerous.The woman remained near the doorway, gun still steady in her hand.She did not look frightened by Helena’s weapon pointed toward her chest.She did not look frightened by Alexander stepping forward either.If anything, she looked prepared for him.Prepared in the way people become prepared only after rehearsing someone else’s rage for years.My voice came out before thought.“Where is she?”The woman’s eyes shifted to me again.Close now, I saw why her face had struck me.Not resemblance exactly.But memory.Something in the line of her mouth felt tied to old photographs I had once seen in

Nobody moved when he said it.Take your hands off my daughter.The sentence entered the room with legal certainty, not emotion, the kind spoken by men used to entering chaos and expecting obedience simply because money had always arrived before consequences.Rain still hit the broken hospital glass behind us.Emergency lights flickered across his face.Tall. Controlled. Expensively dressed despite the storm outside. His coat still wet at the shoulders, but nothing about him suggested disorder. Two security men stood behind him, silent, trained, waiting only for instruction.And yet all I saw was how Liora reacted.She knew him.Not with fear.Not with surprise.With recognition.Her fingers tightened around the stuffed rabbit, and she took one tiny step backward toward Marianne before whispering softly,“Uncle David…”Not father.Uncle.But he smiled as though the correction did not matter.“Come here, sweetheart.”My body reacted before thought.I moved slightly between him and her.

The lights died so completely that for one second the hospital ceased to exist.No flicker.No emergency glow.Only blackness.Then Liora cried out.A small frightened sound, sharp enough to cut through every adult instinct in the room.That sound moved me before thought.I reached blindly and found her shoulders.“It’s alright. I’m here.”Her small hands clutched my wrist instantly, desperate and trusting in the way children choose the nearest warmth when darkness arrives too fast.Around us, voices sharpened.“Do not move,” Alexander ordered somewhere to my left.Metal shifted.A weapon cocked.Helena’s voice came low from near Clara’s bed.“Door.”Victor answered from deeper in the room.“Already listening.”Rain still struck broken glass, louder now that sight had disappeared.Someone knocked over metal equipment.David cursed under his breath.One of his security men moved, but Alec’s voice stopped him instantly.“Take one more step without speaking and I break your arm.”A phone

For one second, nobody breathed.Not because of the gun.Not because Lucien still stood in the broken doorway with armed men behind him.Because the envelope in my hand suddenly weighed more than every weapon in the room.My mother’s handwriting.Elena.Dead for years.Yet unmistakable.The slope of the letters.The pressure on my name.The final line beneath it:Open this only when Edward finally fears the living more than the dead.My fingers shook before I even tore it.“Don’t,” Edward said sharply.That alone made Alexander move closer.Not to stop me.To make sure nobody else did.“Open it,” he said.His voice was quiet, but absolute.Liora remained in his arms, watching every face like she understood more than adults wanted.Lucien did not move from the doorway.He waited.As though he had crossed blood and bullets only to watch this exact second arrive.I opened the letter.One folded page.A second sheet slipped out with it.Old paper.Hospital seal faintly visible underneath.

The sentence on the back of the letter burned harder than Clara’s blood still drying on my hands."If Clara dies, never let Alexander open the chapel first."For one second, everything else disappeared.Not Clara’s body.Not the broken door.Not Lucien still standing inside smoke and rain.Only that line.Because dead women do not leave precise warnings without reason.Alexander saw my face change immediately.“What is it?”I folded the paper instinctively.Too late.He had already understood the warning involved him.“Selene.”His voice sharpened slightly.“What did she write?”Before I answered, Edward laughed again — weaker now, but still dangerous.“Ah.”That single sound turned every head toward him.“You know,” I said.Edward leaned on his cane, pale and bleeding, but smiling as though pain improved him.“I know Elena trusted the wrong instincts at the right times.”Lucien moved toward him instantly.“What is under the chapel?”Edward ignored him.His eyes stayed on me.“Better