บททั้งหมดของ The Billionaires Desire: บทที่ 21 - บทที่ 30

Ruby did not reopen the intercom.The risk of speaking while the primary screen still displayed the empty corner of Kevin’s office outweighed the narrowing window Maximum had named. She remained at the laptop, hands resting on the keys in the posture of continued work, and let the decision form without external signal. Influencing the analyst toward deeper silence protected the current gap in Kevin’s knowledge. Influencing him toward controlled disclosure risked accelerating the deeper pass and the Ohio posture at the same moment. Neither option was clean. Both carried visible cost under live observation.She chose silence.The choice was not passivity. It was the calculation that any active direction given through the intercom would itself become evidence on the open channel to Kevin’s office. Silence preserved the appearance of containment. It also left the analyst’s fear as the primary driver of whatever happened next.Seventeen minutes after Maximum’s last contact, the primary scr

Ruby did not move away from the intercom.The four-hour clock Maximum had named was already running. A full duplicate of the packet sat in staging, aimed at the same Risk and Integrity queue that had logged the correlation request. Blocking it would keep the horizontal spread inside KLabs under the narrower limits of Kevin’s degraded fragment and the analyst’s silence. Letting it run would push the complete material beyond Kevin’s immediate containment and force the third party’s hand into the open. Both paths carried consequences that would reach the loft and, through the authorization review, Hilliard.She was still under live observation. The holding view of Kevin’s empty office remained on the primary screen. The corner cameras recorded every shift of posture. Any visible reaction risked becoming part of the record Kevin was already building. The decision had to be made without giving the room a readable signal.Ruby released the intercom button, returned to the secure laptop, and

The primary screen stayed dark.Ruby stood in the center of the loft after Kevin’s final statement and let the new architecture of the night settle around her. Soft contact on the Hilliard house was authorized. The field team had the language. Execution waited only on his trigger confirmation from New York. The conditions were explicit: any further external contact reaching her, any additional movement of the packet material that could be tied to her position, or any sign that she was receiving real-time status on the Ohio side would release the trigger. The next channel that opened into the loft would decide whether her father answered the door.She did not test the intercom.She did not reopen the secure laptop. The system notification confirming approach authority still sat on the screen where she had left it. The cameras in the corners recorded the stillness she chose instead of movement. The dark primary screen felt louder than the holding view had ever been. Absence of his image

The text overlay vanished from the primary screen before Kevin’s expression changed. Ruby could not determine whether he had seen it. The split view remained active, his face on one side, the emergency trace cascade still scrolling on the other but the single line about a pre-staged secondary pathway and a next release independent of the loft intercom had appeared and disappeared in less than three seconds. If the cameras had captured her eyes tracking the text, the record now contained that detail. She kept her face turned toward the glass and gave the room nothing further to interpret. Kevin’s voice continued from the screen without pause. “Physical security detail reaches your floor in twelve minutes. Two operators. They will remain in the corridor, not inside the loft, unless the containment protocol escalates again. The intercom goes offline in four minutes for a full system purge of the side pathway used in the override. During the purge you will have no building communicat

The operator near the entrance closed the remaining distance and stopped two paces from Ruby.“Turn around,” he said. Voice low, professional, empty of threat beyond the situation itself. “Hands visible. Against the glass.”Ruby turned and placed her palms lightly against the cold window. The river moved below in its usual dark current. Behind her she heard the second operator sweep the rest of the loft, laptop, disabled intercom, corners then take a fixed position that covered both her and the primary screen. No one touched her. The revised authority was to secure, not to handle. The distinction was procedural. It still removed the last fraction of physical autonomy she had retained inside the room.Kevin’s voice continued from the screen, already moving past the loss of the gate into response.“Field team is thirty to forty seconds from the front walk. I am pushing a direct voice counter-order to the team lead on an emergency channel. Propagation is not instantaneous under the secon