บททั้งหมดของ No Escape from the Billionaire’s Contract: บทที่ 101 - บทที่ 110

Zariel felt the floor tilt slightly beneath her, the vertigo of a fact rearranging everything around it. "Then who did we just hear," she said. "Because that was his voice. I'd know it anywhere." "I believe it was his voice as well." Kaelen's jaw had gone tight, controlled, the way it did right before he said something he didn't want to be true. "Which means whoever placed that call had access to him directly. Close enough to hold a phone up to his mouth, or close enough to make him believe it was safe to speak." "Because that was his voice," Zariel said again, quieter this time, like saying it twice might make it make sense. "I'd know it anywhere, Kaelen. That was Harrison." "I am not disputing that it was his voice." Kaelen was already dialing, phone pressed hard to his ear, pacing three steps toward the vending machines and three steps back. "I am disputing that it was his phone." "Those are two different problems." Zariel said "They are the same problem wearing different clot

"Stay here," Kaelen said, already reaching for his keys off the console table, already halfway to a decision he hadn't asked her opinion on. "No." "Zariel." "You don't get to do that tonight of all nights." She had her coat on before he'd finished saying her name. "We agreed. No deciding things for me alone, remember. That includes deciding I stay behind while you drive toward whatever those sirens are." His jaw tightened, the muscle ticking once. For a moment she thought he might actually argue it, pull rank the way he used to before any of this had softened him, and some old, tired part of her braced for it. "Fine," he said instead. "But you stay in the car until I tell you otherwise." "I can agree to that much." "That is the only version of tonight I can survive," he said, quieter now, already moving for the door. "I need you to let me have it." She didn't argue that part. Some battles were worth losing on purpose. *** They were four minutes out when Merlin called back, an

Summit confirmed. H.M., scheduling authority. Zariel frowned at the screen. Harrison had picked this date, more than a year ago, long before any merger, any vault, any of it had a name yet. She pulled up a separate file out of habit more than suspicion, the old case notes on Evelyn Hart, just to cross-check nothing embarrassing overlapped on the calendar that week. Her stomach went cold before her mind had finished reading it. Evelyn Hart. Date of death: eleven years ago, exactly one year prior to the newly confirmed summit date. She read it three times, the way you read a number that refuses to become smaller no matter how many times you check it. The summit was scheduled for the anniversary of Evelyn's death. Not close to it or around it. Exactly on it. She was already walking back toward Kaelen's office before she'd fully decided to, the folder still open in her hand, and when she said his name from the doorway, something in her voice must have carried the whole discovery ahe

The journalist answered on the second ring, the way people who owed you favors always did. "That old contact of yours is off the Sterling beat," the voice said. "You want her replacement, that's Devon Marsh, and he's considerably more careful than she ever was about sourcing." "Careful is fine," Julian said. "I don't need careful to run far. I just need it to run." "Run what." Julian looked at the photograph still glowing faintly on the other screen beside him, Harrison's laugh frozen mid-frame from a decade and a half ago, and made a decision he would spend the rest of that night wishing he had not. "Trouble," Julian said, "in the Sterling marriage. Nothing specific. Just enough that people start asking their own questions instead of waiting for someone else to answer them." "That's vague enough to be useless." "It's vague enough to be deniable," Julian said. "That's the entire point. I'm not handing you a headline. I'm handing you a reason to make a few phone calls of your own

He didn't answer that, and the not-answering was its own kind of answer, the same one it always was. "Here's what scares me," Zariel said, quieter now, some of the fight draining out of her voice and something more tired taking its place. "It's not just last night. It's that you'll do it again. Some other crisis, some other two in the morning, and you'll stand outside some other door talking yourself into the exact same decision, because it felt like love while you were making it. And I'll wake up to another version of this same conversation, except by then I might not have the energy left to have it properly." "I do not want that to be true." "I don't either. But wanting something not to be true has never once stopped it from happening on its own." She rubbed at her eyes, suddenly exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with how little either of them had slept. "I need space," she said, and the words surprised her slightly, arriving out of her mouth before she'd fully decided to