Semua Bab His fake wife, their real obsession: Bab 41 - Bab 50

Lydia’s POV The brass lock on the mahogany door rattled once from the outside, a muffled jiggle of a master key against the tumbler, but the heavy deadbolt held fast under the weight of our bodies. Outside in the corridor, a muffled voice called out, lost to the thick, soundproofed velvet lining the walls. Inside, the green room remained an inferno of copper, sweat, and heavy, suffocating heat. "Ignore the door," Kian commanded. His voice wasn't the smooth, analytical tone he used in the boardroom; it was low, raspy, and stripped of all corporate restraint. My back was pressed flat against the mahogany panels. The cool wood offered zero relief against the fever burning through my skin. I couldn't move. Cassian held both of my wrists gathered in one of his massive, calloused hands, pinning them high above my head against the doorframe. His knuckles dug into the wood, locking my arms in place while his chest h

Lydia’s POV The second strike from the battering ram split the heavy mahogany panel right above my head. A jagged crack ran down the dark wood, spraying a shower of fine sawdust over Zane’s broad, sweat-slicked shoulders. Outside in the corridor, shouting voices echoed through the splintered gap hotel security guards and frantic event coordinators trying to force the heavy deadbolt. "Clear the hall! The door’s jammed from the inside!" Inside the green room, no one stopped. The chaos on the other side of the wood didn't slow the feral storm inside; it amplified it into an absolute, suffocating frenzy. Cassian slammed his hands flat against the mahogany frame on either side of my head, his massive chest heaving as he lifted my right leg higher, locking my knee over his shoulder. He didn't offer a single second of hesitation. He drove his hips forward, burying his thick, burning length straight to my absolu

Lydia’s POV The silence in the VIP suite was so absolute I could hear the faint, high-frequency hum of the high-definition displays behind us. "I'm standing at your front gate, Lydia," the raspy voice repeated through the satellite speaker, the crackle of static doing nothing to soften its icy, aristocratic cadence. "Tell the Vance boys to drop their weapons. You wouldn't want blood on the cobblestones before the ink even dries." My hand froze over the glass table. The blood drained from my face so fast a sudden, freezing vertigo made the room tilt. "He didn't run," I whispered, the realization hitting my chest like a lead weight. "The news, the reports about his car crossing the state line—it was a decoy." "He didn't run because he wasn't fleeing," Kian said, his voice dropping into a deadly, razor-sharp register. He tapped frantically at his terminal, pulling up satellite telemetry over the Citadel’s perimeter. "Julian didn't have the capital or the pull to set up a dark-freque

Lydia’sPOV The rain hit the high arched windows of the Citadel like burst pipework, throwing distorted, jagged shadows across the polished hardwood floor.It was 2:00 AM.I sat back in the leather armchair behind the desk, watching Kian’s hands fly across his secondary interface. On the terminal in front of him, a detailed, high-resolution surveillance dossier was open, showing real-time feeds of a gated mansion in the city's private district."Judge Benedict Vance-Thornton," Kian murmured, his voice as calm and clinical as a surgeon dissecting a specimen. "Appointed to the Superior Family Court bench eight years ago. To the public, he’s a pillar of conservative legal virtue. To the credit syndicates operating out of the waterfront, he’s a desperate addict running out of time."Cassian leaned against the bookshelf, a dark crystal tumbler of amber liquid held casually in his hand. He wasn't drinking; he was watching the ice melt. "How much doe

Lydia's POV The digital clock on the armored SUV’s dashboard glowed a stark 4:52 AM as we tore through the rain-slicked city streets toward the Citadel.Seventy-eight minutes.That was all the time Judge Benedict had left before his illegal, advance-notice hearing would gavel Julian’s fake prenuptial agreement into permanent, unappealable law.When we burst through the heavy doors of the Citadel’s glass-walled tactical suite, Cassian didn't say a word. He stepped up to my central glass desk and slammed the thick, blood-stained leather-bound dossier flat onto the illuminated surface.THUD.The heavy binder lay beside the encrypted hard drive, the cold brass latch catching the ambient blue light of Kian’s terminal array."Every single cent," Cassian rumbled, his rain-drenched hair dripping onto his broad shoulders as he wiped a smear of drying blood from his knuckles. “Four point two million in cartel promissory notes, st