All Chapters of Signed, Sealed, Pregnant by the Ruthless CEO.: Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

The baby shower's remaining guests had dispersed within the hour, murmured, uncomfortable goodbyes exchanged amid the wreckage of a celebration no one quite knew how to properly conclude, and Luna had spent the rest of the afternoon watching Ethan pace the length of the living room with his phone pressed to his ear, coordinating with lawyers, board members, and financial officers in a continuous, escalating stream of increasingly grim updates. The soft blush balloons still hung near the windows, incongruous now against the tense, urgent energy that had replaced the afternoon's earlier joy, and Luna found herself, more than once, staring at the abandoned dessert table with a strange, disconnected grief for how quickly the day had turned."Payroll runs in four days," Ethan said, more to himself than to anyone in particular, dragging a hand through his hair with an exhaustion that had nothing to do with physical fatigue. "If the freeze isn't lifted by then, we're looking at missed paymen

"Show me," Luna said, some old, weary instinct already bracing her for whatever fresh crisis had interrupted the fragile, precious peace of the last hour, though some small, exhausted part of her rebelled against the very idea that anything could be allowed to intrude on this exact moment. Ethan shifted carefully, mindful of Marcus still sleeping against his chest, and turned the phone screen toward her, his expression carrying a complicated mixture of vindication and fresh, deepening alarm. The soft, golden peace of the recovery room felt, for one brief, resentful moment, like something Luna wanted to physically defend against whatever news waited on that small, glowing screen. "The independent DNA lab ran the confirmatory test on Julian three days ago," Ethan said quietly. "The results came back this morning. He's telling the truth, Luna. He is my father's biological son. That part of his claim was never a lie." "Okay," Luna said slowly, some careful relief building despite her

Orion had been gone eleven days. His calls had grown increasingly sparse over that time — brief, clipped updates that told Luna almost nothing beyond the barest confirmation that he remained alive, still working whatever thread he'd uncovered the night he'd left with a packed duffel bag and a promise she'd spent nearly two weeks now trying not to resent him for making. *Close to something. Can't explain yet. Stay safe.* The messages did little to ease the particular, familiar dread that had settled back into her chest, a dread made considerably sharper by the fact that she now had two newborns to protect on top of everything else currently circling her family. Aria, for her part, had thrown herself into work with a fierce, deliberate focus that Luna recognized as her sister's particular way of processing heartbreak — Damien's betrayal still a raw, unhealed wound she rarely mentioned aloud, her days filled instead with sketches and fittings for a new collection she'd taken to callin

The masked figure made his decision in the span of a single, desperate heartbeat. He lunged not toward the fire escape's open drop but sideways, attempting to wrench Marcus free from Orion's grip in one last, reckless bid to use the infant as leverage against the weapons and bodies now closing in around him from every direction. The motion proved his undoing — Orion, already braced for exactly this kind of desperate final gambit, twisted his own body to shield Marcus completely while simultaneously driving his uninjured shoulder hard into the man's chest, sending him stumbling backward against the fire escape's iron railing with enough force to knock the fight fully out of him. Kai closed the final distance in an instant, weapon still leveled, his free hand seizing the intruder's collar and hauling him bodily back from the railing's edge before wrenching his arms behind his back with brutal, practiced efficiency. Ethan reached the window a half-second later, and the moment Marcus's

A year had passed since the small chapel wedding, and Luna Vance sat at the breakfast table on an entirely ordinary Sunday morning, watching her husband attempt, with considerably less success than his boardroom victories usually afforded him, to convince a nineteen-month-old Elena that oatmeal belonged in her mouth rather than in her hair. "You're losing this negotiation," Luna observed, sipping her coffee with unhurried amusement, Marcus contentedly banging a spoon against his own highchair tray beside her. "I am not losing," Ethan said, with the particular, offended dignity of a man who genuinely believed it. "I am simply allowing her the illusion of control while I work toward the actual objective." "She has oatmeal in her eyebrow, Ethan." "A tactical sacrifice." Elena, entirely unbothered by either parent's assessment of the negotiation, giggled with delighted, oatmeal-smeared triumph and smashed her small fist directly into the bowl for good measure, sending a fresh spray