The Billionaire’s Blood Debt: Ruined by My Enemy のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 81 - チャプター 90

Elowen's POV The lobby of the Vane Global tower was louder than I expected, even with the glass doors closed behind me. Security had already tightened up since the last time I'd been here, two guards at the turnstiles instead of one, both watching the doors like the reporters outside might actually try the handles. One of them recognized me before I reached the desk. "Mrs. Blackwood." He said it carefully, like he wasn't sure yet whether that was a title he should still be using today. "I wasn't told to expect you." "I'm a director," I said. "I don't need to be expected." He glanced at his terminal, then at his colleague, then back at me, clearly deciding it wasn't his job to be the guard who stopped a Blackwood from getting into a Blackwood building on the worst day of the company's year. "Ninetieth floor," he said, and waved me through.

Elowen's POV I woke up expecting Celeste. Usually, eight o'clock meant the soft hum of the dressing room doors sliding back, followed by the quiet rustle of garment bags. White wool. High collars. The uniform Madame Laurent had built to make me look like something pristine standing half a step behind Killian. Instead, the penthouse was quiet. When I walked into the dressing suite at twenty past eight, there was no garment bag on the valet stand. No printed schedule waiting by my jewelry tray. Killian was standing at the mirror, adjusting his cuffs. He'd already traded his boardroom suit for a soft dark sweater over an open collar, and he looked relaxed in a way that felt almost indecent on a man whose stock had dropped eight percent overnight. There was no phone laid out on the counter beside him, no folder of the day's headlines waiting to be reviewed before bre

Elowen's POV I woke up alone. The sheets beside me were cold in a way that told me he'd been gone for a while, not minutes. I lay there for a moment before I moved, staring at the ceiling, trying to decide if I felt anything, and finding, to my own quiet alarm, that I did. Something soft and unguarded that I hadn't let myself feel in this apartment since all this started. The green silk dress was gone from the floor. Someone, probably Killian himself, had picked it up sometime in the night and hung it over the chair, smoothed flat, like even in sleep he couldn't leave a mess unattended to. I sat up slowly and listened. No hum of the shower. No low murmur of him on a call in the next room. Just the particular silence of an apartment that knows it's empty. I found a note on the kitchen counter, in his handwriting, brief and businesslike in a way that didn't match a

Elowen's POV The morning opened clear and cold over Manhattan. The rain from the night before had washed the city clean, and the towers along Madison Avenue looked sharp and bright under an early sky. Inside the penthouse, the quiet wasn't the anxious kind we'd been living in for days. It was steadier than that, the kind of calm two people share when they both already know exactly what's waiting for them. I didn't reach for white wool. I chose a charcoal suit from the back of the closet instead, plain and well cut, nothing that needed help to hold my shoulders straight. The ring on my hand felt lighter than usual, or maybe I'd just stopped noticing its weight. Killian stood at the mirror, fastening his cuffs. Dark navy suit, unhurried, no folder waiting on the counter, no phone lying face up beside it. When he caught my eyes in the glass, he didn't smile or try to reassure me. He jus

Elowen's POV The boardroom didn't break with a gavel or a motion. It just stopped. For five long seconds after Killian said those two words, the room held a silence so complete I could hear the air system humming behind the wall panels. Kateryna didn't answer him. She didn't touch her tablet. She didn't look at Chairman Koch or Croft. She stood frozen at the console, her breathing shallow, every bit of the sharp, victorious authority she'd walked in with drained out of her all at once. It was the senior investigator who finally broke the silence, stepping forward with a carefully blank face. "Chairman Koch," he said. "Given what just came up, my team needs to go straight to the servers on this floor and check exactly where that transfer order actually came from. We can't rely on the paperwork alone anymore." Chairman Koch closed her binder slowly. She looked betw