บททั้งหมดของ No Escape from the Billionaire’s Contract: บทที่ 51 - บทที่ 60

Zariel heard it before Kaelen said a single word, the particular shift in his shoulders that meant whatever was coming through that phone had already changed the shape of the night."Merlin," he said. "Say that again."She watched his jaw lock, watched two degrees of color leave his face, watched him repeat, low and controlled, words she was about to hear for herself anyway. "They know where she is.""How," Zariel said, already reaching for her coat. "How would they possibly get that from a hospital security detail.""Not from the hospital." Kaelen's voice had gone very flat, very careful. "From Harrison.""They tortured it out of him." She said it plainly because someone had to, and it was better coming from her than sitting unspoken in the room. "That's what this is."Kaelen didn't answer that. He didn't need to.The line was still open, Merlin's voice tinny and fast on the other end, already giving instructions to someone neither of them could hear, already moving. And underneath h

Zariel woke to the sound of Kaelen's voice, low and clipped, coming from the study down the hall.She lay there a moment, listening to the particular rhythm of it, the way his sentences got shorter and more clipped the more urgent something was, and felt her stomach tighten before she'd even gotten out of bed. She had learned that rhythm the way you learn weather.She found him already dressed, three cups deep into the coffee he made too strong on purpose, phone pressed to his ear, Merlin's voice tinny on the other end."Confirm it landed clean," Kaelen was saying. "No, I do not want a status update at nine. I want confirmation it is finished.""Finished," Zariel repeated, once he'd hung up. "Finished what?""Good morning." He did not quite

Maya's apartment had felt small before. It felt smaller once Silas hung up, the email still glowing on Kaelen's phone, the unsigned notebook contract forgotten between a cold mug of tea and a Thai takeout menu."We can't work this from here," Kaelen said, already folding the notebook paper into his coat pocket, careful, like it mattered more than the subpoena did. "I need my full terminal, not my phone, and Silas already said this stays between the three of us for now.""Then let's go home," Kaelen said, and did not think about the word until it was already out of his mouth.*****The study lamp threw a small, steady circle of light across the desk, and everything outside that circle had gone dark hours ago. Zariel sat cross-legged in the desk chair, Kaelen standing behind her,

The team found Silas's phone sitting on his desk, screen dark, battery drained to nothing. No sign of a struggle. No sign of him either. By noon, Merlin had pulled every camera within three blocks and found exactly one useful frame, a blurred shape leaving through a service exit twenty minutes before the security team arrived, moving fast enough to suggest choice rather than force."Fast enough to suggest he left on his own," Kaelen said, reading the report over Zariel's shoulder. "Or fast enough to suggest someone made him.""We don't know which yet," Zariel said. "We keep looking. We don't stop everything else to do it.""Merlin's running his known contacts. Enata's flagged his accounts in case anything moves through them. If he's alive and hiding, we'll see it eventually. If he isn't hiding voluntarily, we'll see that too, eventually, and I would rather not sit here imagining which."It was, she knew, a strange thing to say about a man who had almost told them something enormous an

The press conference room at Sterling Tower had been designed, Kaelen had once said, to make bad news look survivable and good news look inevitable. Today he needed it to do both at once, while carrying a piece of knowledge none of the cameras in the room would ever be told."The Global Sterling Summit will proceed as scheduled," he said, from behind a podium that had cost more than most people's homes. "Six weeks from today. The Vantage Group merger will be finalized on that stage, in front of every stakeholder who has waited two years to see it happen."He did not say the other thing the date meant. He had not said it out loud since the afternoon Zariel had set that folder down in front of him, finger against two circled lines, and shown him that Harrison had chosen this exact day, over a year in advance, for reasons that had nothing to do with mergers at all. Six weeks from today would fall on the anniversary of Evelyn Hart's death. He said the date anyway, evenly, into a room full