جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 70

“High-risk multiples are not a suggestion to rest, Mr. Blackridge. They are an absolute mandate.”Dr. Aris didn’t flinch as she handed the medical folder to Maximilian, her voice cutting through the quiet hum of the clinic like a razor. She held his intense, unwavering glare without taking a single step back.“Bed rest for the next two weeks,” she continued, looking over her glasses at me. “Minimal emotional strain, zero physical exertion, and absolutely no high-stress confrontations. If her heart rate spikes like it did an hour ago, your body will try to clear the pregnancy itself. Do I make myself clear?”Maximilian didn’t yell. He didn’t issue threats. He simply bowed his head in a tight, solemn nod, accepting the doctor’s orders as if they were written in stone.“Crystal,” he murmured raspy.By the time we returned to the estate, the shift was immediate. The air inside the gates felt different—less like an armed prison and more like a heavily fortified sanctuary.Additional securi

The broad, calloused hand resting on my stomach went rigid, every muscle in Maximilian’s forearm locking up instantly as if he’d been struck by lightning.His breath hitched sharp and loud in the quiet room. His grey eyes, usually so calculated and unyielding, widened into circles of absolute, disbelieving awe.He didn’t move. He didn’t even blink. He just stared down at the spot beneath his palm where that tiny, impossible flutter had just pulsed against his skin.“Emery …” he choked out, his voice barely a raspy thread. “Tell me I didn’t just imagine that.”A soft, tearful laugh burst from my chest at the sight of the formidable Mafia king looking completely rendered speechless by a microscopic ripple.“You didn’t imagine it,” I whispered, reaching down to cover his hand with mine, guiding his broad palm a fraction of an inch closer to the warmth beneath my cotton sweater. “That was one of them.”“It felt like ... like a butterfly’s wing,” he murmured, his voice thick with an emotio

The face pixelating on the blue-lit monitor was one I had seen nearly every single day since I arrived at the estate.“Frans,” I whispered, the name dropping into the cold air of the security room like a lead weight.He was one of the senior guards, a man who had stood at the foot of the grand staircase during my first week here, a man who had opened the iron gates for me every time I went out into the courtyard, always offering a polite, silent nod.“Seven years,” Lucas growled, his voice a horrifying rumble of pure, unadulterated fury. His fist slammed into the edge of the console with enough force to rattle the screens. “He’s been on the Blackridge payroll for seven years!”“He didn’t start working for us seven years ago as a mole,” Maximilian said, his voice dropping into a register so dangerously quiet that it chilled the blood in my veins. He leaned over the console, dark eyes locking onto the timestamped reflection on the screen. “The Director bought him. When did the admin ove

The faded black ink of my father’s signature on the twenty-year-old parchment looked so crisp, so achingly familiar, that it felt like a ghost reaching out from the grave to wrap its cold fingers around my throat.Right beside it, pressed into dark red wax, was the coiled serpent emblem of the Blackridge family.“He knew,” I whispered, the words barely scraping past my lips as I stared at the illuminated glass of the security monitor. My hand hovered over the screen, trembling so hard my fingernails clicked against the display. “My father knew Alexander Blackridge. He didn’t just know him—he signed a contract with him.”Maximilian didn’t move from his spot beside the console. The heavy silence of the room settled over us, thick and suffocating, punctuated only by the quiet, rhythmic hum of the cooling fans.“It wasn’t a business partnership, Emery,” Maximilian said quietly, his voice dropping into a raspy, solemn register. “It was a pact of last resort.”I snapped my head toward him,

The crimson text on the primary display burned into my retinas, casting a stark, blood-red reflection over the polished steel console.“Victor Vance,” I read out loud, the name tasting like cold ash on my tongue as the syllables left my mouth.The room went deathly still. The only sound was the low, electric hum of the servers processing the background data.I stared at the high-resolution mugshot beside the name—a man with razor-thin lips, a crooked nose, and eyes as dead as flint.“The Director’s primary enforcer,” Lucas said, his voice dropping an octave as he stepped beside the console, tapping a key to expand the subject’s dossier. “He commands the Vanguard strike units. If The Director gives an execution order, Victor is the one who handles the logistics.”“He was there,” I whispered, my fingers pressing hard against the edge of the desk until my nails turned white. “He walked into that hospital room in a doctor's coat while my father was lying helpless in that bed.”“He was,” M