Todos los capítulos de The Billion Dollar Revenge For Lucia Hale: Capítulo 111 - Capítulo 120

She sat down again, hands steady now.Seeing her seated, Atlas lowered himself onto the couch a few feet away. He didn’t speak, as he had learned that much in the last few days.“I want a statement, and one that is neither gossip nor Logan’s leak.” She took a deep exhale. “My own account, on my terms.”“How much are you going to tell them?” Atlas asked.She didn’t know, as she hadn’t thought that far yet. Pressing her hands together in her lap, she let herself think for a few minutes.“I wouldn’t say anything about the poison publicly.” She started again. “Not yet, at least.”“Why?”“We can prove what was in my system, but we can’t prove who put it there, unfortunately.” Her voice hardened. “If I accuse anyone without proof, they’ll turn that into yet another story to hit me with. The woman who screamed poison and had nothing to back it up.”“Agreed,” Tony said through the speaker.Elara let out a slow breath as she knew that’s what it would really be and hated it.“But I would tell t

Atlas had the plane fueled and waiting before Elara finished packing. She tried not to find that annoying, since she had asked him to arrange it and he had simply done it. Curt carried her bag down to the car without a word, and the drive to the airfield passed in a blur of dark streets while she rehearsed her opening line under her breath.By the time the plane leveled out over the Pacific Northwest, she had her notes spread across the table and Tony and Tessa on speaker. Tessa ran the crisis communications firm Tony had hired that afternoon, and she had a calm, clipped voice that made every suggestion sound like a settled fact.“Let’s start with the first thirty seconds,” Tessa said. “I’d lead with the crash and what you lost. People respond to a loss before they respond to a claim.”“No.” Elara tapped her pen against the page. “If I open with what happened to me, it becomes a victim speech, and I’m not giving that speech.”“Oh…okay then.”“Amelia has already told the city I’m tr

Logan didn’t turn the television off even long after the press conference ended. He sat with the remote in his fist while the anchors started picking the statement apart, and he listened to every one of them say her name.Lucia Hale was the name I lived under.As if the six years they spent together had been something she wore, like a coat she’d taken off.“Turn it off, Logan.”Marielle stood in the doorway with Alex on her hip, both of them in rumpled pajamas as the sun began to go down the horizon. She had been standing there for a while, he realized, and he hadn’t heard her come in.“No,” he said plainly.“You’ve watched it four times.”“Five.” He kept his eyes on the screen, where the footage had cut back to the podium. “Look at her, Mari, and look at how she’s standing.”Marielle shook her head. “I don’t want to look at her.”“She said the marriage wasn’t valid.” The words came out lower than he meant them to. “She said it in front of the entire city, like it was a footnote.”“

Elara pressed her hand flat on the table.The idea that someone had gone through her work while she was busy trusting people bothered her more than she wanted to show.“Can you tell who did it?”“Not from this,” Dana answered, shaking her head. “I can tell it happened, when, and from what kind of device, but anything beyond that would be a guess.”Tony studied the log for a long moment, then took off his glasses. “Ms. Whitaker, could you give us the room for a few minutes?”Dana nodded and slipped out. When the door closed, he turned his chair to face Elara.“If those log-ins came from Logan’s system, that’s evidence,” he said slowly. “It isn’t proof of who was sitting at it, but it is a fact that someone copied your work and removed your oldest files right before you disappeared.”“Like someone was preparing for my absence?” Her voice shook. “Logan?”Tony held her gaze.“His system, at least,” he said. “Whether it was his hands is what we need to find out.”Elara was silent for a few

By the morning of the hearing, Tony had done what he did best, which was to make a frightening list smaller.“Hale asked for eight pieces,” he told Elara in the courthouse corridor, flipping through a folder as they walked. “You’ve already pulled three, so there’s nothing left to fight over there. I expect their lawyer to spend most of his time on the rest, especially the ones with the draped seams, and he’ll say they echo Lucia-era work.”“They’re mine,” Elara said.“I know, and that’s why I want you to stay calm if he implies otherwise.” Tony glanced at her. “Dana’s timestamps will do the talking, and you don’t have to say anything at all.”She nodded.At the courtroom doors, Atlas stopped a step behind her with his hands in his pockets.“I’ll stay where you can see me,” he said as he took out his hands and stepped closer to her.Lifting a hand toward her scarf, which had slipped to one side, he straightened it.Elara blinked, recovering from the surprise. “Thank you.”The room was