Lahat ng Kabanata ng Five Years On The Run: The Billionaire's Secret Baby: Kabanata 21 - Kabanata 30

**Colette**I came back from my morning rounds to find Oliver Ashford standing in the corridor outside the break room.He wasn't doing anything. Just standing. Looking through the small window in the door with an expression I'd never seen on him before.I came to stand beside him and looked through the window too.Lea and Elijah were playing cards. Snap, from the look of it. Lea was talking. Elijah was listening. And then she said something that made him laugh again, that real unguarded laugh, and Lea looked pleased in the specific way she looked when she'd accomplished something she'd set out to do.I stood very still.Their heads were bent toward each other over the cards. Lea's auburn hair and Elijah's dark hair. But when they both looked up at the same moment at something Mrs. Park said, their faces were turned in profile and the light from the break room window caught them both.The same angle of jaw. The same gray eyes. The same way their expressions moved, that particular shift

Oliver's pov Elijah had gone back to acting the way he used to.He was quiet and distant, like there was a wall between them that I couldn't break through no matter what he tried. It started Sunday evening, and by Monday morning Elijah was giving him the same polite responses and blank looks he'd perfected over the past year.I could n't understand it. The boy had been fine when they left the hotel on Saturday. Not fine exactly, Elijah was never what anyone would call fine, but he had been different. He'd talked about Lea the whole car ride home, about the card game they'd played and the book she was reading.Then Sunday evening something changed and the wall went back up.It put me in a foul mood. I'd been trying all weekend to figure out what I'd done wrong, what I'd said or not said that made my son retreat again. Nothing came to mind. We'd had dinner together, watched a documentary Elijah picked, everything had seemed normal until suddenly it wasn't.Monday morning Elijah bar

ColetteThat was the first thing I noticed when Mrs. Park led me into the house, not the expensive furniture or the high ceilings or the artwork on the walls. It was the way Oliver was standing in the hallway, looking completely lost. He was shirtless and I didn't even register that at first. His hair was messy like he'd been running his hands through it and his eyes were wild in a way that made my chest tight."He won't come out," Oliver said the moment he saw me. "He locked himself in his room and something's happening in there, I can hear things breaking and he could be hurt and I tried to break the door down but it won't give way."I looked at the door he was pointing to and saw the dents in the wood where he'd obviously thrown his shoulder against it."He's been asking for you," Mrs. Park said quietly. "He keeps saying he wants Lea's mummy."I walked toward the door and pressed my hand against it, heard something crash inside and my heart jumped into my throat."Elijah?" I call

ColetteI was dreaming about that night. The one from five years ago, the one I tried so hard not to think about. In the dream I was back in that hotel room and everything was hazy and wrong, my body felt like it was on fire and there were hands on my skin, cold hands that somehow made the burning worse and better at the same time. I couldn't see his face but I could feel him and the way his chest felt under my palms when I reached up in the darkness.The dream shifted and I was running my hands over bare skin, tracing muscles and feeling a heartbeat that wasn't mine. Then I woke up.The first thing I saw was Oliver's bare chest.I blinked and my vision cleared and yes, that was definitely Oliver sitting in a chair beside the bed, still shirtless, his head tilted back like he'd fallen asleep sitting up. I frowned because something about the sight of him like that felt familiar in a way that made my stomach twist, like I'd seen this before or touched it before or something I could

OliverI was dreaming about that night again.The one from five years ago, the one that changed everything. In the dream I was at that business dinner and someone handed me a drink. I took it without thinking because why would I suspect anything, I was surrounded by colleagues and potential partners and people I'd known for years.Then the room started to spin.I remembered excusing myself and walking toward the private rooms upstairs because I needed to lie down and figure out what was happening to my body. I remembered feeling hot and strange and wrong, remembered my vision blurring at the edges.They'd drugged me and I knew that now. I knew that the plan had been to frame me for rape, to destroy my reputation and take everything I'd built. The people who'd done it were behind bars now but back then they'd already arranged everything, already prepared the woman I was supposed to find in that room, already planned how they'd invade the space the next morning with her family and t