Semua Bab THE BILLIONAIRE'S STAND-IN BRIDE: Bab 71 - Bab 80

Aria’s POV We spread everything across the study table that evening—the Hollow House journal, the photographed church ledger, and now the bank’s incident report, three separate documents from three separate decades, all circling the same buried name. Dmitri had returned from the bank with copies of everything the branch manager could legally share, and the table had slowly filled over the past hour with pages that seemed, at first glance, to have nothing to do with one another. “If the ring is real,” Romanov said, “then your mother’s family didn’t just disappear from the historical record. Someone in that bloodline is still active. Possibly still close.” “Or someone stole a family heirloom to make us think that,” Dmitri said, ever careful with certainty. “I’m not ruling it out. But we shouldn’t assume the person wearing that ring is necessarily blood.” “I know how it looked,” I said. “But I also know what I saw in my mother’s things. That ring wasn’t decorative. It was old, and

Aria’s POV We reached the estate within the hour, Romeo waiting for us at the gate, having driven straight over the moment his contact confirmed the movement at the Gathering House. “You should have called me the moment you started tracking this,” Romanov said, though there was less bite in it than usual, more exhaustion than accusation. “I wasn’t sure it mattered yet,” Romeo said. “I’ve been quietly pulling threads since Marta’s confession, trying to make up for everything I got wrong before. I didn’t want to bring you something half-formed.” “It’s not half-formed anymore,” I said. “Come inside. We need everything you have.” He followed us through the gate without argument, and I noticed, watching him, how different he looked from the brother who’d once handed Aria over to a stranger’s leverage without a second thought. Something in him had genuinely shifted since Marta’s confession, a quiet urgency that looked less like guilt now and more like a man determined to actually earn

Aria’s POV The drive to the Gathering House took just under an hour, the road narrowing steadily from paved county highway to a rough, unmarked track that Dmitri’s satellite imagery had barely managed to capture. Romanov drove in silence beside me, his attention split between the road and the tactical display mounted on the dash, tracking Elena’s position in the support vehicle a half mile back. Neither of us spoke much during the drive. There wasn’t much left to say that the terrace hadn’t already covered, and some quiet part of me suspected we were both saving whatever nerve we had left for whatever waited at the end of the road rather than spending it on words that wouldn’t change anything now. “Two minutes to the tree line,” Dmitri’s voice said over comms, steady despite the hour. “Romeo’s team is already in position on the eastern approach.” “Copy that,” Romanov said. “We’re proceeding to the northern edge now.” We parked where the access road bent away from the property, w

Aria’s POV Dmitri secured both men quickly, radioing for a second vehicle to transport them while Romeo swept the rest of the building’s perimeter, confirming no one else remained hidden inside. Only once the property was fully cleared did Romanov finally let me step through the doorway, his hand resting briefly against the small of my back, a silent promise that he was still right there beside me. I paused just past the threshold, letting my eyes adjust to the dim interior light, my pulse still racing from everything that had happened in the clearing. Whatever fear I’d carried on the drive here had shifted into something sharper now, something closer to anticipation than dread. The main room was smaller than I’d expected, though every inch of it felt weighted with significance the moment I crossed the threshold. The long table Dmitri had described sat centered beneath a bare overhead bulb, papers spread across its surface in loose, deliberate stacks, as though whoever had been wo

Aria’s POV The study looked different by mid-afternoon than it had at dawn, every surface covered now in neat, organized stacks of documents, Dmitri’s meticulous system already imposing order on everything we’d carried back from the Gathering House. Romeo sat hunched over his laptop near the window, cross-referencing financial records against the contact list while Elena reviewed photographs of the founders on the main screen, her expression unreadable. I lingered near the doorway a moment before joining them, still steadying myself from the terrace, the quiet of it already feeling impossibly far away against everything spread out across the desk now. “We’ve confirmed twelve names on that list,” Dmitri said, without looking up from his notes. “Eight appear to still be active. Three are marked with the symbol we saw repeated near several crossed-out entries, which I now believe indicates deceased. One remains unaccounted for entirely.” “The unidentified name,” Romanov said. “The o