All Chapters of Surrogate To My Ruthless First Love: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

The classroom still carried the warmth of Family Day, but something had changed. The laughter had quieted, the excited voices had faded into smaller conversations, and for Luna the entire room seemed to shrink around one moment. Her eyes stayed on Leo. On the drawing. On the star. The same place. The same shoulder. The same shape she had seen in the mirror after bath time for as long as she could remember. Her fingers tightened around the edge of her certificate while her heartbeat climbed higher than it should have. “Do you have this mark too?” The question left her before she could stop it. Everything went silent. Leo blinked. Emily stopped moving. Nathan looked up from the model house pieces in his hands. Even the teacher seemed caught somewhere between surprise and confusion. Leo frowned slightly. “What mark?” Luna swallowed. “The star.” Leo stared at her. “What star?” Across the room, Seraphina went completely still. The color drained from her face so quickl

The robotics laboratory felt louder than usual that afternoon even though nobody was actually speaking much because pressure had a way of changing the atmosphere of a room without needing words, and today pressure sat at every table beside every unfinished project. Regional qualifiers were less than two weeks away. Teachers were watching. Parents were asking questions. Sponsors had started paying attention. Children who normally laughed during practice were suddenly counting seconds and checking scores. Leo stood over the central workstation while lines of code moved across the screen in front of him. His expression had gone completely serious, and the easy confidence people associated with him had turned into sharp concentration. Mia sat beside him quietly reviewing movement patterns. Oliver held a screwdriver upside down again. Nathan stood across the table. Arms crossed. Jaw tight. Watching. The robot arm suddenly jerked. The entire mechanism tilted. Th

The city had already gone dark by the time Elias returned to King Holdings, but the lights on the executive floor still burned against the glass walls like stubborn stars refusing to disappear. The building was quieter at night and that silence had become dangerous because it gave him room to think, and thinking had become the one thing he no longer trusted himself to do. Marcus was already waiting inside the office with coffee that had long gone cold and a stack of reports neither of them intended to read tonight. The board crisis could wait. Market pressure could wait. Even Clara’s unanswered calls could wait. The only thing sitting in front of Elias now was the enlarged photograph spread across his desk. The hospital corridor. The night Luna was born. The night Seraphina disappeared. The night everything broke. Elias leaned over the image again while the glow from his monitor sharpened the grainy black and white frame. The first time he saw it, it looked ordinary. The second

The studio lights were too bright in the way that made everything feel slightly unreal, like reality had been polished and flattened for public consumption, and yet nothing about what Elias was sitting through felt controlled, not the questions, not the cameras, and definitely not the woman sitting beside him who had once disappeared from his life and returned like a storm that refused to move on. Seraphina sat with perfect composure, hands resting lightly on her lap, expression unreadable in a way that made her feel untouchable to everyone watching, but Elias noticed the smallest details the cameras would miss, the slight tension in her jaw when certain questions were asked, the brief pause before she breathed in like she was holding herself together by habit rather than effort. The interviewer smiled like everything was already scripted for success. “So,” she began, leaning slightly forward, “the public wants to understand something very simple.” Her eyes moved between them. “D

The robotics laboratory had always felt safe to Leo because machines obeyed rules even when people did not. Circuits connected where they were supposed to connect, programs followed instructions, and mistakes could usually be repaired with enough patience. Today the room felt different because tension sat between the team members before practice even began and nobody seemed willing to move around it. Nathan dropped his bag beside the worktable harder than necessary. Mia looked up briefly before returning to her tablet while Oliver pretended not to notice because pretending had become his survival strategy whenever Leo and Nathan stood in the same space. Coach Miller clapped once. “Trial round starts in thirty minutes and I want the mobility system tested before then.” Leo nodded immediately. “We should run the balance code first because the arm movement still drifts left.” Nathan folded his arms. “No.” Leo looked at him. “No?” Nathan met his eyes. “We fix speed first.” “T