All Chapters of SEDUCING MY ELDER BROTHER'S BEST FRIEND : Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Jane's POV The suffocating silence that followed his question stretched across the grand foyer like a piano wire pulled to its breaking point. I stood completely paralyzed on the gallery landing, my fingers digging into the polished mahogany railing so hard my nails threatened to snap. Below us, the tension between the two men vibrated with a dangerous frequency. Benjamin didn't look up at me, nor did he look at Victoria, who was practically vibrating with malicious anticipation beside the grand entrance. Instead, he took two slow, deliberate steps forward. "Your sister's name is being dragged into this, Leo, because Victoria’s father lacks basic executive restraint," Benjamin said, his deep voice thoroughly steady. "Don't lie to him, Benjamin!" Victoria hissed, stepping into his path, her finger trembling. "You assaulted Arthur! You tore his collar and shattered a four-figure crystal decanter because he—" "Because he put his greasy hands on my ward under my dining table," Ben

Jane's POV The next evening, the estate was dead quiet. The absolute silence of the massive mansion pressed against my eardrums like a weight, thick with an atmosphere that made it hard to breathe. Benjamin had spent the entire day locked in the secure West wing with his high-level security detailing and corporate legal teams. He had left me completely isolated, trapped in my room with nothing but my own racing thoughts and a crushing sense of guilt. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Leo's exhausted, trusting face as he ran toward the tarmac the night before, sprinting straight into a digital illusion. I could still feel the phantom weight of Benjamin’s blood-stained hand covering my mouth in the dark, his rough voice branding me as his accomplice. The lie I had told directly to Leo's face in the foyer was a slow-acting poison circulating through my veins. I refused to just sit in the dark and wait for Benjamin’s algorithm to finish swallowing my life. I needed leverage. I neede

Benjamin's POV The digital countdown bleeding across my encrypted tablet was a physical noose tightening around my throat. For a decade, I had controlled every variable in the Williams-Vance infrastructure. I had mapped human behavior, market fluctuations, and legal vulnerabilities with absolute precision. But as the private jet screeched onto the rain-slicked tarmac of the Berlin hangar, my flawless algorithms were entirely useless. The Syndicate hadn't just accelerated their timeline; they had completely severed my remote administrative access to the Spree River facility. "Sir, the local perimeter feeds are completely dead," my security detail rasped from the front seat of the armored extraction van as we tore through the dark, neon-lit streets of Berlin. "The Munich firewall has initialized a total structural blackout. We are driving blind." "Drive faster," I snarled, my voice a low, feral rumble that barely sounded like my own. I didn't look at the bleeding cuts reopening b

Benjamin's POV The damp, stale air of the abandoned subway maintenance tunnel smelled of rot and rusted iron. I dragged Leo’s limp body across the gravel path, every single step sending a spike of agony straight through my fractured ribs. My vision danced with black spots, but I couldn't afford to collapse. Not here. The Syndicate’s cleanup crews were actively scouring the Spree River banks with thermal scopes. If we stayed in the open, we were dead before dawn. I dropped Leo onto a discarded canvas tarp in the corner of the damp alcove and collapsed against the crumbling brick wall, my breath coming in shallow, ragged gasps. The billionaire glamour, the flawless suits, the absolute corporate authority—it was all buried at the bottom of the river. "Benjamin," Jane’s voice trembled. She was kneeling in the dirt beside her brother, her entire body shaking violently from the early stages of hypothermia. Her wet clothes clung to her frame, her lips a bruising shade of blue. The si

Benjamin's POV I kept my eyes fixed on Jane's face, my chest aching with every shallow inhalation, using her presence to anchor myself against the white-hot agony radiating from my fractured ribs. "Don't look at her." Leo’s voice was a whisper, but it sliced through the quiet apartment like a razor. I didn't turn my head immediately. I deliberately let a second pass before I shifted my gaze away from Jane to face him. Leo stood three feet away from my chair, his frame cast in partial shadow. The blood from the blast had dried into a dark, rusty crust along his jawline, and his eyes were entirely bloodshot. But the concussed confusion was completely gone. In its place was detachment. "Ten years, Ben," Leo murmured, his voice remarkably steady, devoid of the corporate thunder he usually brought to a boardroom standoff. It was the quietness of his tone that signaled the definitive end of our world. "For ten years, we built Williams-Vance. We shared investments, we shared a lega