Semua Bab The Billionaire's biggest regret : Bab 31 - Bab 39

The final months of my pregnancy passed under a strange, quiet tension. Even after Sophia and Dr. Anthony were locked away with life sentences, even after the last of their allies had been rounded up, the warning about the birth being a target stayed with me like a shadow. Dominic refused to take any chances. He hired a private medical team that rotated in shifts, installed new security systems throughout the mansion, and barely left my side. Grace, once the woman who had looked at me with cold disapproval, now coordinated everything with the same fierce protectiveness she once reserved only for her son.I spent most of my days in the sunlit sitting room that had been converted into a temporary nursery wing. Soft yellow walls, a new crib already waiting, and a rocking chair where I would sit for hours with one hand on my belly. The baby kicked strongly, as if reminding me that he was still here, still fighting. I talked to him constantly. I told him about the orphanage, about the day

The photograph sat on the study desk between us like a quiet accusation. The man in the image stood just beyond the hospital entrance, half-turned toward the camera, his face partially shadowed by a dark cap. The timestamp matched the exact morning Alexander had been born. Someone had been close enough to watch us celebrate the arrival of our son and then disappear without a trace.Dominic paced the length of the room, the note still clenched in his hand. “The child was never the target. The mother still is.” He read the line again, his voice low and tight. “This doesn’t make sense. Sophia and Dr. Anthony are locked away. Their appeals failed. Who else would still be coming after you?”I remained seated, the weight of the message pressing against my chest. The old fear that had lived in me for so long stirred awake, sharp and familiar. Alexander was safe upstairs with the night nurse. Grace had already been called and was on her way. Yet the quiet of the mansion no longer felt safe. I

The message glowed on the screen long after I stopped reading“Elena was useful. Replaceable. You are not. Sleep lightly.”I sat in the nursery with Alexander still asleep against my shoulder, the soft weight of him the only thing keeping me from shaking. Dominic stood in the doorway, the same exhausted, protective look on his face that he had worn in the first days after the birth. When I turned the phone toward him, the color drained from his expression.He took the device, read the words twice, then set it face-down on the dresser as if the screen itself might carry the threat further into the room. “We’re done with private nurses,” he said. “No more outside staff in the nursery. No more open access. From tonight, only family and the security team I trust with my life.”Grace was already downstairs when we brought her the new message. She listened without interrupting, her face tightening with every word. When Dominic finished, she simply said, “Then we treat this as an active thre

The photograph lay on the study desk under the bright light of the desk lamp. Margaret Hale stood on the left, younger than the age she would have been at the time of the settlement, her hand resting on the shoulder of a boy roughly ten years old. The boy’s face was turned slightly away, but the line of the jaw, the shape of the eyes, and the set of the mouth were close enough to a young Dominic that the resemblance could not be dismissed.Dominic stood over the image for a long time without speaking. Grace sat in the chair opposite the desk, her hands folded tightly in her lap. I remained near the doorway, Alexander asleep in a carrier against my chest, the steady weight of him the only solid thing in the room.“He was real,” Dominic said at last, reading the words on the back of the photograph again. “And he remembers.”Grace’s voice was quiet. “Your father swore the claim was false. He said there was no child. He paid her to disappear and ordered the subject closed. I believed him.