All Chapters of Rebirth of the Billionaire’s Substitute Bride: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

91 Chapters

The promise

Kira’s POVWhile returning home, we decided to bypass the main gates of the Lockwood estate. We took a subterranean service tunnel that lead us directly into the mansion’s secure sub-basement.The adrenaline that had kept me from breaking down was finally beginning to crash, leaving behind exhaustion in its wake. The cold from the ocean was lingering in my bones. I was shivering umcontrollably. My tactical clothing was still plastered to my skin, dripping water on the floor.Aziel dismissed the shadow guards with a single hand gesture, and in moments, we were completely alone.Silently, he moved towards me and wrapped his arm tightly around my waist, supporting my weight as he led me to the private elevator that connected to the master suite.As soon as the doors slid shut, I gave in to the overwhelming urge prompting me to lean my head against Aziel’s shoulder, even with my teeth chattering. He was just as soaked as I was, his dark hair plastered to his forehead, but the heat radiati

Trapped

At 4:00 AM, the sprawling Myles estate was dead quiet.Zara stood in the shadows of the massive, vaulted garage, staring at the fleet of luxury vehicles. Her hands were covered in black grease. She had spent the last hour meticulously pulling the spark plug wires and draining the transmission fluid from the Maybach, the Mercedes, and the Range Rover.She wiped her hands on a rag, her heart beating vehemently against her ribs. Inside the house, the encrypted landline in Victor’s study began to ring.Zara dropped the rag and slipped quietly through the side door, walking softly down the carpeted hallway until she reached the door of her father’s private study.Through the gap, she watched him snatch the phone off the receiver. He was wearing a silk robe, his face pale and slick with sweat. He had been up all night, frantically watching the financial news as rumors of a massive, unexplained crash in the offshore dark pools began to leak onto the dark web."Myles," Victor answered, tryin

Ruin

Kira’s POVAt 5:00 AM, I was sitting at the secondary terminal in the Lockwood penthouse study, wrapped in one of Aziel’s oversized dress shirts, my hair still damp from the shower. Aziel stood behind my chair, his hands resting on my bare shoulders. He had thrown on a pair of dark sweatpants, watching the monitors with a worrying stillness."Are you ready?" Aziel asked, his thumb lightly tracing my collarbone.I tore my eyes away from him and looked at the screen. On the monitor was a single, compressed file containing every single line of Victor’s physical routing ledgers. The shell companies, the bribes, the exact money laundering trails for the Peterson Syndicate. Decades of felony racketeering and treason, all neatly packaged in a single file.I had queued the file to simultaneously dump onto the secure servers of the FBI, the Department of Justice, the SEC, and the private inboxes of three extremely aggressive federal prosecutors."I spent my entire first life terrified of that

Stepping into the light

Kira’s POVBy the time the markets opened on Monday morning, the financial landscape of the city had already been rewritten.The news of Victor Myles’s arrest and the seizure of his web of shell companies sent shockwaves through Wall Street. The federal indictments were sealed, but the scale of the FBI raid was enough to send Myles Industries' stock plummeting into the abyss.Simultaneously, the whispers of the global dark pools freezing completely paralyzed the city's criminal elite. Rival syndicates were panicking, hoarding their remaining cash. They were all terrified of the invisible force that had just decapitated Elon Peterson’s financial network.In the midst of it all, there was a ginormous, multi-billion-dollar power vacuum, and the Lockwood Conglomerate did not hesitate to fill it.I sat on the edge of Aziel’s desk in his penthouse office, sipping a latte, watching him work. He was moving like a force of nature. He had three different phones operating simultaneously, directi

Platinum Exchange

Kira’s POVThe Platinum Exchange was a glittering occasion held in a fortress of reinforced glass, white marble, and cascading crystal chandeliers located in th center of the financial district.Tonight, it belonged entirely to the Lockwood Conglomerate.The victory gala was the most exclusive, heavily guarded event of the decade. The city’s elite—politicians, hedge fund managers, and international aristocrats—milled about the grand ballroom, completely oblivious to the underworld war that had secured the wealth they were currently celebrating. They were here for one reason: at midnight, Aziel Lockwood was officially introducing the CEO of Aurelia Holdings to the world.I stood on the mezzanine balcony, looking down at the sea of tailored tuxedos and designer gowns.I was wearing a completely backless floor-length midnight-blue silk gown with a plunging neckline. A heavy, fifty-carat diamond pendant—a gift Aziel had locked around my throat in the limousine—rested against my collarbone

Duel

Kira’s POVSuddenly, the room felt like it had had all its oxygen forcibly drawn out of it.Athena didn’t talk much or waste time gloating as I had expected. She moved with the silent speed of a striking viper, like someone who had been well trained in the military instead of the coder she actually was.She lunged forward, the ceramic blade slashing in a horizontal arc aimed directly at my throat.Instinct—forged by weeks of grueling sparring sessions with Aziel on the sub-basement mats—instantly hijacked my nervous system. I didn't freeze or scream, despite the fact that my body badly wanted to do that.Instead, I dropped.The blade sliced through the empty air where my neck had been a fraction of a second before, burying itself deeply into the fabric of a sable coat hanging on the rack behind me."Stand still," Athena hissed, forcefully yanking the blade free.I didn't stand still. I kicked off my stiletto heels, and scrambled backward. Aziel’s voice echoed sharply in the back of my

Dead man switch

Kira’s POVThe Lockwood sub-basement was a stark contrast to the glittering chandeliers of the Diamond Exchange. It was a windowless vault of reinforced concrete, harsh fluorescent lighting, and total silence.Athena was strapped to a steel chair in the center of the room. Thick, industrial zip-ties dug mercilessly into her wrists and ankles. Her caterer’s uniform was torn, and a dark bruise was already blossoming across her throat where I had struck her.She was sitting broken, beaten, and entirely at our mercy.But as Aziel and I stepped into the room, the door clanking shut behind us, Athena didn't cower. She looked up through her disheveled hair, her breathing still a raspy wheeze, and she smiled, revealing her bloodied teeth."You hit harder than you look, Nyx," Athena rasped, her voice cracking."And you are much slower than your code," I replied coldly. I was still wearing my ruined midnight-blue gown, my feet bare on the freezing concrete, but I had never felt any more armored

Deadman’s switch

Kira’s POVAt 6:00 AM, the sun had risen over the city skyline, flooding the Lockwood penthouse with a brilliant golden light.I hadn’t slept a wink. The ruins of my silk gown were crumpled in the corner of the master bathroom, replaced by a dark turtleneck and cargo pants. I was standing at the wall of monitors in the study, my fingers flying across the keys as I pulled up every public and private schematic of the Peterson Private Hospital.Aziel stood beside me, a steaming mug of black coffee in his hand. He was on a secure comms channel with his shadow guard commanders, recalling every single operative deployed across the globe back to the city limits.Suddenly, the secondary monitor—tuned to the local news networks—flashed with a breaking news alert."Turn the volume up," Aziel ordered, dropping his comms tablet onto the desk.I tapped a key, and the anchor’s voice filled the quiet study."We interrupt our scheduled broadcast for a live press conference from Elon Peterson, CEO of

Buried secrets

Kira’s POVFear threatened to paralyze my limbs, but I steeled myself against it. I didn't have time to be terrified. I only had time to be Nyx. I needed to solve this once and for all."I need twenty-five years of municipal records, property deeds, and classified police dispatch logs," I muttered, my fingers flying across the keyboard with more speed than I’ve ever mustered. "I am bypassing the proxy servers. I’m going straight through the front door of the police department's central mainframe."Aziel stood by the floor-to-ceiling window, a burner phone pressed to his ear, listening to his shadow guard commanders mobilize for the shipyard parley. He looked over his shoulder at my screens, his brows furrowing."The department's firewalls will flag a brute-force entry in seconds," Aziel warned quietly. "They will trace the IP directly back to this tower.""Let them," I replied, my eyes locked on the cascading streams of green code. "By the time the Feds realize someone is in their arc

Decrypted

# Kira's POVThe bar hit one hundred percent before I was ready for it to.*Decryption Complete.*And then the blur that had been sitting on my screen for the last four minutes, twenty-five years old and pixelated to hell, snapped into focus so fast it felt like the monitor had reached out and grabbed me by the throat.I stopped breathing. I mean that literally, not as some dramatic flourish — my lungs just quit, mid-inhale, and my hands slid off the keyboard and landed in my lap like they belonged to someone else.A crime scene. Night. The kind of white, clinical flash that only comes from a police camera. A black sedan folded around a pine tree on some rain-soaked embankment, the whole passenger side caved in like a fist had closed around it, fire already crawling up through the shattered windshield."Kira?" Aziel's voice came from somewhere behind the ringing in my ears. His hands landed on my shoulders and I felt him register the shaking before I did — that's how bad it was. "Kira

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