All Chapters of Save it, Mr Arrogant! I Dumped You After Reborn.: Chapter 221 - Chapter 230

248 Chapters

Chapter 221: The safe house

Gabriel POVThe bullet had entered through the kitchen doorway and passed through the outer edge of my left shoulder, carving a trench through skin and muscle before exiting cleanly on the other side. A graze, technically. The kind of wound that combat medics called "lucky" and that only felt lucky if you'd never been shot.It didn't feel lucky. It felt like someone had pressed a lit cigarette into my shoulder and held it there.I'd been moving toward the hallway when it hit, pulling my sidearm from the holster I wore at breakfast because paranoia was the only habit that had never let me down. The impact spun me sideways, slammed me into the kitchen island, and my hand hit the countertop hard enough to crack my phone's screen, which skidded across the tile into the mess of broken glass, spilt food, and plaster dust that my kitchen had become.After that, everything was compressed into instinct.I stayed low. Returned fire through the blown-out window, two controlled shots toward the m

Chapter 222: Going underground.

Gabriel POV"Reach out to every network we have. Bangria, Crescent Harbour, Lisaro, Casavera, everywhere. Every contact, every operative, every asset. Tell them to go underground immediately as per the new protocols. Move to the facilities prepared for this scenario—no communication via standard channels. No movement. No operations. Everything pauses."Dante's eyebrows rose fractionally. Going underground meant shutting down the entire operation. Every revenue stream, every supply chain, every relationship we maintained with port authorities, customs officials and local power brokers. It meant going dark in a way that would take months to recover from."For how long?" he asked."Seven days. I'll issue further instructions then. But for now, everything stops. Everyone goes to ground. I'm not losing another person because we were too busy running operations to secure our people."He nodded. "Anything else?""The compound. What's the situation there?""Media arrived within the hour. Heli

Chapter 223: First, the children.

Gabriel POVThe room was very still. The overhead light buzzed faintly, casting everything in a flat, clinical white."I know," I said quietly.Nine and seven. A boy and a girl. Orphaned once by a car accident and now orphaned again by a bullet through a kitchen window on a Tuesday morning.I set the photograph down on the table carefully as if it were made of glass."Where are the children now?" I asked."At home. Mrs Harlow's flat in the Adisa district. A neighbour is watching them. They don't know yet. The news hasn't reported any names, and the government hasn't sent anyone because the excavation is still ongoing.""When will they send someone?""Tomorrow, most likely. After the site is processed and identities are confirmed.""And when they do?"Leo hesitated. "Standard procedure for minors with no surviving family is temporary placement in government care. Foster system."Foster care. Two children who'd already lost their parents would be shoved into a system that ran on bureauc

Chapter 224: They're all that's left of her.

Gabriel POVLeo drove.The car had tinted windows, an unmarked sedan, and back roads through the industrial corridors of Bangria's eastern districts. I sat in the back with a cap pulled low and a coat that wasn't mine, watching the city slide past through dirty glass.Bangria looked different at night. Stripped of the construction cranes and the hustling foot traffic and the aggressive commerce that defined its daylight hours, it became something quieter and sadder. Shuttered shopfronts. Stray dogs trotting along kerbs. Streetlights with burnt-out bulbs that nobody had replaced because no one with the authority to do so cared about this part of the city.Mrs Harlow had lived in this part of the city her whole life—the Adisa district.It was mainly filled with working-class people who were honest and kind. This was the kind of neighbourhood where people left their doors unlocked because the only things worth stealing were already shared.She'd refused to move, even after I'd offered to

Chapter 225: Evelyn Bennett was my weakness

Gabriel POVEleanor was Mrs Harlow's first name.In eleven years, I'd never used it. She'd always been Mrs Harlow. The woman with the wooden spoon and the flat stare that could stop a grown man in his tracks. A woman with a first name and grandchildren and a life outside my compound that I'd never bothered to fully know because I'd been too busy being the centre of my own universe."I'll take care of them," I said again, meaning every word.Leo drove us back to the safe house. Nadia fell asleep in my lap within five minutes, her head against my chest, Mr Buttons wedged between us. Elijah sat beside me, wide awake, watching the city pass through the tinted windows.From the tense way he held himself, I knew he knew something was wrong and was waiting for someone to tell him what.I put my arm around his shoulders, pulling him closer to me. He leaned into me, but neither of us spoke.At the safe house, I carried Nadia upstairs and set her on the bed that'd been prepared for her. Elijah

Chapter 226: Gabriel Ross should live.

Gabriel POVI must have dozed off because I woke to Leo's hand on my shoulder and the grey light of pre-dawn seeping through the window."Boss." His voice was low, urgent. "You need to see something."I followed him downstairs. The ground-floor operations room was lit by the blue glow of three laptop screens. Dante was there, and Martinez, both hunched over one of the screens with expressions that matched Leo's tone."What is it?" I asked."The third-party force," Dante said. "The ones who intervened during the attack. We've been trying to identify them since yesterday. No luck on facial recognition, no equipment left behind, nothing. Until twenty minutes ago."He tapped the screen. A video began playing. It was security footage, pulled from a traffic camera two blocks from the compound—timestamp: 07:51, approximately three minutes after the third-party force had engaged Rowan's eastern flank.The footage showed a street corner that had been empty at first, then two vehicles appeared,

Chapter 227: Two week after...

Evelyn POVIt’s been two weeks since I stopped hearing from Gabriel Ross and stopped calling his phone.Not because I wanted to, but because the number no longer existed.Somewhere around day five, the automated voice that had been telling me the subscriber was unavailable was replaced by a flat tone and a message informing me that the number I was trying to reach had been disconnected and not switched off, not redirected, disconnected, permanently, as though the person attached to it had been erased from the network altogether.In the beginning, Adrian had been so certain Gabriel had survived. He'd shown me a report, typed and annotated, listing Gabriel's status as alive at the last update. I'd held that piece of paper against my chest and cried with a relief so complete it had felt like being born again.For three days, I'd clung to that word — alive — like a woman gripping a rope over a canyon, convinced that the next call would be his voice, rough and warm, telling me he was okay,

Chapter 228: Who else is wavering?

Evelyn POVOn the surface, the launch was shaping up to be the most significant event in Bennett Holdings' history. The Green Valley site looked spectacular — I'd driven out there twice in the past week, and both times I'd stood at the edge of the Phase One residential area and felt a pride so fierce it almost drowned out the sadness underneath it.The houses were finished. Central Park was landscaped. The commercial district facades were up, and the streetlights were installed, and from the right angle, at the right time of day, it looked like a real neighbourhood. A place where people would live and work and raise families. A place I'd imagined on paper and willed into existence.I'd built this. Whatever else was falling apart, I'd built this.Adrian had been present throughout. He wasn’t hovering, pushing, or using my vulnerability as an opening.He came to meetings and provided counsel when asked. He reviewed contracts, flagged issues, and offered his legal team's resources when B

Chapter 229: Evelyn Bennett didn't go down without a fight.

Evelyn POVGrace swiped through her tablet. "I've reached out to the remaining Phase Three investors for confirmation calls. Most haven't responded yet, which could mean anything. But Hargreaves Trust returned my call ten minutes ago, and their tone was... cautious. They didn't commit to anything, but they asked questions they've never asked before. Questions about our cash reserves, our debt service capacity, our contingency planning for budget overruns on Phase Three.""Those aren't questions an investor asks when they're comfortable. Those are questions an investor asks when someone's told them to be uncomfortable.""That's what I thought too."I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes. Three days. I had three days until the launch, and someone was pulling the financial foundation out from under it.The question was who.My first thought was Victoria. Even from custody, Victoria had connections, contacts who owed her favours, people she'd cultivated over years of social climbing

Chapter 230: Cedar Heights...

Cedar Heights Golf & Country Club sat on a hill overlooking the eastern edge of Crescent Harbour, its manicured grounds spreading across forty acres of rolling green that smelled like fresh-cut grass and money.I hadn't been here in months, and it seemed like a lifetime since the day Isabella had humiliated me in the locker room. Adrian had grabbed my wrist on the fairway, and Vincent had walked away without looking back, and a golf ball had knocked Isabella unconscious, and Adrian had screamed that it was all my fault.A wonderful day, really. The kind you frame and hang on the wall.Grace had arranged the meeting. Simon Prescott, portfolio manager at Meridian Partners, had agreed to meet me at the Cedar Heights rooftop bar at eleven o'clock. Not his office. Not mine. A neutral venue, which in the language of corporate negotiations meant "I don't want this conversation on record." That should have been my first warning.I arrived at ten forty-five. Early, because I'd rather sit alone

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