Lahat ng Kabanata ng SEDUCING MY ELDER BROTHER'S BEST FRIEND : Kabanata 41 - Kabanata 50

Jane's POV The freezing wind of the North Sea slapped my face like a blow as I stumbled onto the slick, iron deck of the merchant vessel. The midnight air was blinding, thick with a torrential downpour that turned the ocean into a swirling, black abyss all around us. The storm was a deafening roar, a chaotic crashing waves and howling gales that threatened to swallow the entire ship whole. Every surface was coated in a dangerous layer of ice-cold brine and grease, making it nearly impossible to maintain a footing. Behind me, Leo was barely upright. His face was completely bloodless, a gaunt mask of agony as he leaned his entire body weight against a rusted ventilation pipe. His left hand remained clamped like a vice over his right forearm, but it wasn't enough; the deep, jagged knife wound was still leaking a steady stream of blood that the rain instantly diluted into pale streaks across the iron deckboards. Benjamin followed him, a silent, predatory shadow in the darkness. His lef

Jane's POV The jagged, grey skyline of Manhattan didn't look like a beacon of victory when our rusted merchant vessel finally slipped back into New York territory under the dark cover of a freezing Tuesday midnight. It looked like a vast, stone graveyard waiting to swallow the remaining pieces of our broken lives. Returning to the grand Williams estate in Westchester was entirely out of the question; Benjamin’s private intelligence feeds had flagged it hours ago as a high-risk perimeter crawl zone, surrounded by unmarked federal sedans and flashing forensic units. The Spree River fallout had crossed the Atlantic Ocean significantly faster than our vessel, stripping Benjamin of his corporate anonymity and turning his legendary name into a toxic, international brand overnight. We holed up in a dusty, long-forgotten shipping warehouse tucked into the edge of the industrial Brooklyn waterfront. It was a decaying brick structure that had belonged to my father before his final, fatal ban

Jane's POV ​The air in the warehouse instantly turned to ash as the heavy steel door hit the brick wall, revealing the unmistakable silhouette of Vance Senior stepping through the smoke. Two tactical operatives flanked him, rifles raised, their faces completely obscured by matte-black visors. ​"Lower the weapon, Benjamin," Vance Senior commanded. "You're a brilliant technician, but you're a terrible soldier. Look at yourself. You can barely breathe." ​Benjamin didn't drop the sidearm, though the violent tremor in his fractured ribs made the barrel shake. He stepped forward, deliberately casting his massive shadow over me to block the tactical lines of sight. "You used the federal task force to clear your own rogue operatives in Berlin, Vance. Don't play the law-abiding citizen now. This is a lawless extraction, and you know it." ​Vance Senior took a calculated step forward, the light hitting the triumphant sneer on his face. "Leo gave us the digital keys to the mainframes twenty m

Jane's POV ​The legal deposition room didn't have the heavy, historic dignity of a courtroom. It had something worse: the sterile, hyper-polished malice of corporate litigation. ​The harsh fluorescent panels overhead hummed in a steady frequency that had vibrated behind my eyes for five straight hours. The air conditioning was cranked down to a freezing chill, clearly designed to make a witness sweat out of psychological friction while their skin turned blue. ​I sat at the center of a wide conference table, my hands clamped tightly in my lap beneath the edge of the wood so the two court reporters wouldn’t see the violent, uncontrollable tremor in my fingers. I wore a conservative, high-necked navy blue dress—the clothing the federal marshals had handed me after they tore me away from the warehouse at dawn. It was a defensive shield meant to make me look like an ordinary data clerk, not the woman living in the epicenter of Benjamin Williams’s empire. ​But against Victoria’s lega

Jane's POV Benjamin lay completely spent on the low cot, his massive frame curled slightly inward to protect his ruined torso. The violent exertion from the courthouse corridor, combined with the agonizing friction of our embrace, had completely broken his physical reserves. His breathing had deteriorated into a wheezing rattle that echoed hollowly against the high concrete walls, a clear sign that his fractured ribs were rapidly worsening. Looking at him, a wave of self-loathing clawed at the inside of my throat. The brilliant, untouchable CEO of Vance-Williams was reduced to a hiding fugitive because of me. If I had controlled my selfish desires and fantasies, he would still be sitting in his glass penthouse instead of shivering on a dirty wool blanket in a long-forgotten brick shell. I needed to do something. I couldn't just sit here and watch him bleed out from the inside while the digital press feeds picked his life apart. Carefully, so as not to wake him, I slipped out fr