Semua Bab The Glass Contract - His Captive Bride: Bab 41 - Bab 49

The hum of the server was the only thing left to fill the vacuum of the room. It was a low note that seemed to pass directly through the floorboards and into the soles of Grace’s feet, a permanent reminder that the machine never truly slept.Outside, the last faint reflection of the police cruisers' emergency lights dissolved into the thick, wet pine canopy of the Edmonton estate. The sirens were entirely gone now, swallowed by the vast, empty Alberta night. There was no lingering echo of her father’s frantic screaming; the soundproofing of the estate’s upper wing was as absolute as a vault door.Grace remained standing by the desk, her palms resting flat against the polished walnut surface. Her skin felt entirely cold, yet the place on her neck where Elias’s lips had brushed moments ago still burned like an open wire. She looked down at the digital console. The white text reading DELIVERED had finally timed out, replaced by a generic system standby loop.[SYSTEM_IDLE][NODE_SECURE: R

The mechanical clatter of the keyboard was a miserable substitute for a real conversation.Grace sat alone in the dim room, her eyes burning from the harsh, cold glare of the dual monitors. Elias had gone down to the kitchen himself to fetch the espresso, leaving the heavy oak door slightly ajar. A single stripe of warm, amber light cut across the dark concrete floor, dividing the study like a fault line.On her left screen, forty-two million dollars moved through Rotterdam with the smooth, frictionless ease of water sliding down a glass pane. She had formatted the path perfectly. The system hadn't stuttered. But inside her chest, the gears were grinding to a halt.She took her hands off the keys and pressed her palms against her closed eyes until she saw bursts of static behind her eyelids. She needed to stop looking at the numbers. The numbers were clean, logical, and entirely dead. They didn't account for the absolute mess of being human.She leaned back, letting her head drop agai

The room didn't feel like a command center anymore. It felt like an interrogation room where the lights had finally been turned down, leaving only the ghosts of the people who had stood in it.When Elias finally pulled back, his hands lingered on her waist, his palms warm through the thin cream silk of her dress. He didn't look away immediately. He searched her face, his eyes dark and heavy, looking for the catch. For a man who had spent his entire life anticipating the moves of every board member, politician, and rival courier across three continents, he was remarkably blind to the woman standing right in front of him. He wanted to believe her. That was his flaw. The clinical, untouchable Elias Thorne desperately wanted to be understood by someone who spoke his language.Grace let her hands slide slowly down his chest, her fingers brushing the cotton of his shirt before she let them drop to her sides. She took a step back, creating just enough space to breathe, though the air between

The hallway outside the study was freezing. The old manor house was settled deep into the wooded ridges outside Edmonton, and when the midnight storms rolled in across the Saskatchewan River, the temperature in the concrete corridors always dropped by five or six degrees. Elias didn't mind the cold; it kept his head clear.He leaned his back against the heavy oak paneling of the closed door, his hands slipping into his trouser pockets. Through the thick wood, he could barely hear the rhythmic, muted clatter of Grace’s fingers against the mechanical keyboard. It was a steady, rapid sound—the heartbeat of a woman who had found her purpose in a blood feud.He closed his eyes, letting his head fall back against the timber. His shoulder muscles ached, a deep, persistent throb from the tension of the last four hours. He hadn't felt this kind of visceral fatigue since his first year running the logistics grid after his father died. It wasn't the numbers that wore him down; it was the constan