Billionaire's Biggest Regret 의 모든 챕터: 챕터 21 - 챕터 30

Aria's POV"What do you mean, something's happened to her."Mara's hand was shaking around the phone. "Priya said Naomi left to meet someone this morning and never came back. She's not answering. Her car's still parked outside her office."Damien was already moving, phone to his ear, giving someone an address I didn't recognize. Elias, oblivious, had wrapped both arms around Damien's neck and was tugging at his collar with the single-minded focus of a toddler who had decided, five minutes into knowing this man, that his shirt was interesting."Give him to me," I said, and Damien passed him over without hesitation, already dialing another number before Elias had settled against my hip."My head of security is pulling traffic camera footage near her office now," Damien said. "If she got in a car, we'll know within the hour whose it was.""An hour," Mara said. "Damien, she could be—""I know what she could be." His voice was tight, controlled in the exact way I recognized from three year

Damien's POVThe man by the door was the first to move. His movement was subtle, just a shift of weight from one foot to the other but I felt it. Every instinct I had, all the years I had spent reading a room, knowing when any one speaks, told me the same thing.Edward wasn't going to let this end in a simple conversation, at least not today.“Think carefully before you’d do something you'll regret,” I said. My voice came out steadier and even. If there was something I had learnt a long time ago, then it was the fact that panic in a room like this could be contagious and I wasn't going to catch it first. “There are people who know exactly where I am.” I said but Edward didn't flinch.“Oh really, are they?” He asked almost mockily, tilting his head, he looked almost amused. “You came in with your hands empty and your phone in the car, Damien. That seems more like someone who trusts his own arrogance than a backup plan to me.” Naomi shifted in her chair carefully, the rope at her wris

Damien's POVWhat I Never SaidThe mansion felt too quiet when I finally got home, the way it had always been for over a year now, except this time the silence was different.Tonight I had just watched the man I used to trust being led out of a warehouse in cuffs and today's quietness felt earned actually.I pour myself a glass of whiskey, knowing fully well I wasn't going to drink it, then I sat in the dining room surrounded by six empty chairs.I let myself think about the things I had never properly thought of.My son Elias.I remembered when I found out, how fast it was to process and then afterwards I had to replay it so many times.And then standing in Edward's office and being cornered by him, I had angrily told him the four words I haven't actually said out loud. ‘I have a son’. Words that I had been beating myself over, I had said them to the man who least deserved to hear them first.I never told Aria how it had felt, I had never told anyone. Not that I couldn't but there ha

Aria's POVAn ordinary TuesdayThe sound of my alarm jolted me out of bed at exactly six in the morning, and for the first time in a long time, I didn't groan into my pillow before getting up from the bed.Elias was already awake and standing in his crib with both hands gripping the rail when I went to check on him. He was babbling something to his favorite stuff elephant he refused to sleep without. “Morning, champ” I said, lifting him up. He smelled faintly of the lavender detergent I used on his sheets. Just then, he pressed his face into my neck for exactly three seconds before deciding he was much more interested in grabbing a fistful of my hair. I let out a small giggle as I tried to remove my hair from his firm grip.Getting him dressed up for the morning took longer than I expected, mostly because he kept fighting the socks off for absolutely no reason.By the time I got him into the stroller and was heading out, I was already teen minutes late, but surprisedly itt was the

Vanessa's POVWhat I Get to KeepI was sitting in the small apartment I had rented in Murray Hill, the one Naomi had helped me find after the warehouse incident.The apartment was fully furnished however, nothing in it belonged to, at least not directly, since I rented the house already furnished, all except a suitcase and a laptop I had been told not to use for anything financial until the paperwork separating my accounts from that of my father's had been done.But the bitter truth was, it wasn't going to be completed any moment from now. Naomi and my new financial advisor had told me it'll take months and I wasn't surprised at all.Untangling thirty-one years from a man who have had every single control over it wasn't something that will be that easy.My phone rang loudly on the table, displaying that particular set of block digits that meant it was a call from the correctional facility, the type of number you learn to recognize once someone close to you ends up behind bars.I let i