Todos los capítulos de RECLAIMING MY LIFE FROM THE UNTOUCHABLE CEO : Capítulo 171 - Capítulo 180

POV: Hazel"If you walk out that door alone tomorrow, I swear to you I will follow every step behind you whether you allow it or not," Julian said, and the fear in his voice frightened me more than Rosalind's message ever had.The apartment was quiet around us, the kind of quiet that comes late at night when the city outside has finally exhausted itself, and I could hear the faint hum of the refrigerator from the kitchen, the distant wash of traffic three floors below. Julian stood near the window with his shoulders squared the way they always were when he was trying not to show me how afraid he actually was, and I understood, watching him, that this fear was not the old kind, not the calculated worry of a man protecting an asset. This was something rawer.I turned to face him fully, my back pressed against the cold window glass, watching the man who had once called me a debt now looking at me like I was the only steady thing left in his world. The glass behind me had gone cold with t

POV: Hazel"Your mother knew, Julian," I said before I lost the courage, and watched the man beside me go rigid in the driver's seat like the words had physically struck him, his entire body locking into a stillness that frightened me more than any outburst would have.His hands tightened around the wheel, though he had not started the car, his eyes fixed straight ahead at nothing at all, the parking lot beyond the windshield blurred and unfocused, as though he were looking through it into some other place entirely. "Knew what, exactly? Say it plainly, Hazel. I have spent seventeen years living inside half truths. I cannot survive one more of them.""She knew what your father was planning before it happened," I said gently, reaching over to still his shaking hands with mine, feeling the tremor beneath my palm like something trapped and desperate to escape. "Rosalind has proof. An appointment record, something from before that night. She wants to explain it to you herself tomorrow."Ju

POV: Hazel"She is not finished yet," Rosalind's warning echoed in my head for three straight days before Penelope finally proved exactly how right that warning had been, the words following me through lectures and meetings and quiet evenings until they had worn a groove into my thoughts I could not shake loose.I was standing in my office at the university, reviewing final notes for my keynote at the upcoming charity gala, the late afternoon light slanting gold across my desk, when my phone lit up with an email from an address I did not recognize, the subject line alone enough to make my stomach drop.Your foundation launch will be quite the story, the message read, especially once the press learns your recovery was never quite as miraculous as you have led everyone to believe.Attached was a single photograph, blurry but unmistakable, taken years ago during a physical therapy session I had never told anyone outside my medical team about, proof twisted carefully into something it was

POV: Hazel"Ask about the driver," I repeated aloud, staring at a message that had unraveled something I thought had been settled years ago, a wound I believed had finally closed for good, the old scar tissue of memory suddenly torn open by five simple words.Julian looked up sharply from across the kitchen table, his coffee forgotten between his hands, a thin curl of steam still rising unnoticed toward the ceiling. "The driver who hit you. We already know Penelope hired him. What else is there left to ask?""I do not know," I admitted, my chest tightening as old fear resurfaced, memories of asphalt and pain and five years spent pretending my body simply belonged to someone else, the ghost sensation of impact flickering briefly through muscles that still remembered, even years later. "But someone clearly believes there is more to it than we were told."We spent the next two days quietly retracing everything we thought we understood about that night, poring over old records and half-re

POV: Hazel"Please open your eyes, Julian, please," I begged, kneeling over him in a pool of shattered glass and scattered chairs, my hands pressed desperately against a wound blooming dark and terrible across his shoulder, the fine fabric of his suit already soaked through and clinging to his skin.Around us the ballroom had descended into chaos, security dragging people toward the exits, someone screaming for a medic, the enormous chandelier still swaying dangerously overhead like a warning nobody had heeded in time, its light scattering fractured patterns across the debris-strewn floor.Julian's eyes fluttered open slowly, unfocused at first, then finding mine with visible effort, the effort itself terrifying in how much it seemed to cost him. "Are you hurt," he rasped, his voice barely audible over the surrounding panic. "Tell me you are not hurt, Hazel.""You threw yourself in front of a falling steel rig for me," I said, half laughing, half sobbing, pressing my palm harder again