บททั้งหมดของ Her Fierce Revenge : บทที่ 31 - บทที่ 40

Blood and BloodinesSebastian's POV I came in to find my mother sitting already, tea untouched in front of her, spine straight as a blade. "You said this was about Ariana's son," I said, not bothering to sit. "It is." "Say it." Isabelle studied me a moment, the way she always did when she was deciding how much truth I could handle."Have you counted, Sebastian? The boy's age?" Something in my chest went very still. "Say what you're really saying."He's five. Ariana left this city six years ago. Her tone was flat, clinical, as if she were reading a quarterly report and not blowing my entire understanding of the past six years. Not that hard to figure out." I lowered myself down slowly, and the room tilted a little. You're saying he's mine. It could be, I'm saying. I'm telling you to find out before someone else does it for you." I thought of the boy in the photograph I had seen, only heard about, secondhand, through gossip columns and board members pretending not to whisper. A

Confrontation Ariana's POVThe next morning, before I could even finish my coffee, Kylan had beefed up security. Two new cars followed Jason’s way to school. A plainclothes officer stood by the door, introduced to Jason with great pomp as 'part of a special mission' - a story that had thrilled my son to the point of ecstasy, and made the whole terrifying situation, for one small mercy, seem like a game a five-year-old could survive without ever understanding what it really meant.I'm not so fortunate. I understood it on every level, and not one of those levels lets me breathe easy.By ten o'clock, Sebastian was standing in the lobby of my office.Skylar barreled through the door without knocking, and that told me everything before she could say a single word.He's downstairs. “And the security's are holding him at the desk, but he's not leaving”.He says he'll wait there all day if necessary.Skylar said.”"Let him up," Ariana said, setting down her pen, with a steadiness she did

What Isabella Desires Isabella’s POVI left Camilla's message on my phone unanswered for a full four hours, a deliberate wait to remind her who was in charge of whatever tentative accord we had reached between ourselves.I have something else for you to see.I didn’t believe in vague promises, especially from a woman whose entire life had been built on manipulation disguised as charm, on smiles hiding knives sharpened for whoever was useful enough to bleed.But I trusted patterns, and the pattern here was that Camilla had really found something worth the patient wait. In the thirty years I'd run this family, I'd learned that impatience was the most expensive luxury a woman in my position could afford to indulge in."Come tonight," I finally said, setting the terms as I always did, on my schedule, in my home, under my conditions.She came in an hour later to the minute, cool and collected in charcoal silk, though I noticed the thin gleam of triumph she had not quite practised enough

The Question He AskedKylan's POVPatricia Chen’s words followed me out of her office and into the car, sitting heavy in my chest the entire drive home. Formally designated as his guardian.The phrase seemed huge, too huge to be looking at too closely, with everything else already on the verge of collapsing around us.I found Ariana in the kitchen when I got home, flour streaked across her sleeves; Jason sat on a stool beside her, stirring something with a lot more enthusiasm than precision."We're making cookies," Jason said, as if that explained the condition of the kitchen, which was like a flour-based crime scene. "I can see that." Ariana glanced up at me, something flickering behind her eyes that told me she'd read my expression before I'd said a single word. "Everything okay?"I nodded at Jason. We'll talk later,” I said. She knew. As always, she knew. She turned her back on the bowl. “Okay, Chef. Add the chocolate chips.” Jason dumped in way more than the recipe called

The Warehouse Ariana’s POV The address led her to a quiet part of the industrial district she hadn't been to in years. Most of the warehouses were empty. The windows were boarded up with plywood softening from the rain. Streetlights were long ago abandoned in this city. As usual, she parked two blocks away and walked the rest of the way. Her phone was already in her coat pocket, recording, screen dark, mic on. She’d told Kylan she needed air.A lie. A necessary one. A mandatory one. If he had known, he would have gone with her and stood like a wall outside. Camilla had been quite clear. Alone. Patricia had argued against it in the courthouse parking garage, her voice low and tight. “This is exactly what she wants. Isolation. No witness. No recording. Whatever happens becomes her word against yours.”“I’ll record it,” Ariana said. “She won’t know.”“That’s not a plan. That’s a hope.”“It’s all the time we have.”Patricia hadn’t liked it. Kylan would have liked it even less. But s