All Chapters of The Bride He Refused to Lose : Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

The harsh green coordinates continued to glow relentlessly on Matteo's tactical laptop, cutting through the dim lighting of the underground bunker.No one spoke. No one breathed."They're inside Dimitri Holdings," Matteo repeated, the gravity of the words settling like a lead weight.Lorenzo's expression remained completely unreadable, a flawless mask of carved stone. Only the slight, violent tightening of his jaw betrayed the absolute fury racing beneath his skin."Are you entirely certain, Matteo?"Matteo nodded slowly, his fingers steady but his face pale. "I traced the satellite uplink signature three separate times. It bounced across seventeen dummy servers worldwide before returning to a localized origin point right here in Manhattan." He tapped a macro-key, enlarging a highly detailed, 3D digital blueprint of the skyscraper. "It’s coming from the executive floor. Your private sanctuary."Lorrie's brow furrowed in utter confusion. "But that's impossible. Lorenzo, you told me you

The slow, rhythmic applause echoed hollowly through the sprawling expanse of the executive boardroom, bouncing off the polished mahogany walls and the vast sheets of reinforced glass.Lorenzo never once shifted his steel-gray eyes away from the woman standing confidently on the mezzanine balcony.Amelia Van Arlen.So she was real. Not a ghost fading into the digital static of a monitor. Not an urban myth born from the bloody folklore of the old commission wars. She was not merely a terrifying name whispered in cryptic threats and psychological riddles. She was living, breathing flesh and blood.Elegant. Poised. Completely unbothered by the dozen weapon sights currently centered on her silk-clad torso, she smiled down at them as if the grand finale had already played out in her favor.Lorrie instinctively pressed closer to Lorenzo’s side, her breath hitching in her throat. Without a word or a glance, Lorenzo’s large hand subtly reached behind his back, physically shielding her body wit

*09:14*The countdown glowed a malicious, vibrant crimson on Matteo's tactical tablet, its steady, unfeeling pulse slicing through the atmospheric tension.No one spoke. Every fraction of a second that dissolved into the ether brought the towering structure of Dimitri Holdings closer to becoming a colossal, vertical tomb of twisted metal and pulverized concrete.Lorenzo looked at Elena, her bound form shivering beneath the brilliant fractures of the crystal chandelier. Then his gaze drifted slowly to Lorrie, whose ragged, panicked breathing echoed in the cavernous room. Finally... his steel-grey eyes settled heavily on the unyielding numbers.**09:02**"Matteo.""Boss.""You will personally take the extraction detail and get Elena out of this grid."Matteo immediately shook his head, his posture turning entirely rigid. "No. Absolutely not. I'm taking the sub-level descent. I'll manually disarm the master detonator myself."Lorenzo's voice remained entirely level, an unshakeable column

**03:00**The countdown glowed like a digital death sentence.Three remaining minutes. Three innocent lives hung in the balance. One impossible, devastating truth.Lorrie stood entirely frozen in the center of the fractured room, the air thick with smoke and pulverized glass. Her mind violently rejected the words that had just left Amelia’s mouth.*"You're the last living heir of the Van Arlen family."*"No..." she whispered, her voice barely audible over the blaring building alarms. "It’s a lie. It’s a tactical trick." She spun around toward the monitor, her tear-filled eyes desperately searching the bruised, battered face of the man who had raised her. "My father... Dad, tell her she's lying. Tell me who I am."Carlos Elmundo slowly looked away from the camera lens. His absolute, crushing silence hurt far more than any verbal weapon Amelia could have wielded."My mother..." Lorrie’s voice broke completely, a sob hitching in her throat. "She loves me. I’m an Elmundo. She’s my mother.

**00:10**The alarms screamed a chaotic, deafening symphony of impending doom. Crimson emergency lights bathed the subterranean control room in a thick, rhythmic, bloody glow, painting the concrete walls with a terrifying urgency.Lorrie stared at the fractured glass of the central display, her breath completely caught in her throat. "No... please, no. There has to be another way to force the system down. There has to be a physical override loop!"Matteo was already moving like a man possessed, his tactical knife slicing away the fiberglass trim beneath the pedestal as he searched every hidden panel, every fiber-optic wire, and every reinforced silicon compartment. "There isn't, Lorrie," he ground out, his voice thick with a raw, unfamiliar emotion.The words tasted like absolute, unadulterated defeat.Seventy floors above them, back in the ruined executive suite...Lorenzo’s hand clamped down around Amelia’s wrist like a pneumatic vice, catching her at the exact microsecond the shatt