All Chapters of The Night My Best-Friend Ruined Me: Chapter 121 - Chapter 130

Adrian’s POVThe explosion did not just shake the building.It tore the world apart.One second I had Aria in my arms, the corridor blackened by dust and collapsing debris, my body bent over hers to keep her from getting crushed by the falling pieces around us.The next, something hit us with enough force to rip the air out of my lungs making my grip on her break.The blast shoved me sideways into the wall, and for a second everything turned into pressure, sound, and burning light at the edges of my vision. My ears rang so hard it felt like the whole facility had turned into one long, violent note. Dust flooded the corridor immediately, thick and choking, and I lost sight of Aria in the same instant I lost my footing.“Aria!”I could barely hear my own voice.I pushed off the wall and tried to move toward where she had been, but the floor shifted under me. A section of ceiling came down hard enough to force me to duck. Something sharp scraped across my shoulder. I ignored it and kept

Aria’s POVLeo was on the screen.That was the first thing my mind latched onto, because if I let it think about anything else, I was going to fall apart right there in the middle of the collapsing facility.He looked too still.The sight of him strapped down made something inside my chest tear open so violently I thought I might actually stop breathing for a second. The timer kept ticking in the corner of the feed, each number changing with brutal certainty, and I could not make my eyes leave it even though I wanted to. Even though every instinct in me was screaming at me to look away from the thing that was killing me.Leo.My son.My beautiful, stubborn, laughing boy.Now caught in a machine built by people who could look at a child and see leverage instead of life.I pressed a hand to my mouth so I would not make a sound. It did not help. My breathing had already gone thin and uneven, and my hands were shaking so badly I had to lock my elbows against my sides just to keep from col

Julian’s POVThe comms were still hissing with static when Adrian’s voice cut through and Aria went quiet.That silence did something ugly to me.Not because I wanted her to answer him.Because I did not.Because I heard it for what it was.She was shaking. I knew she was. I could hear it in the tiny broken breath she took before she stopped speaking altogether. And Adrian, with all his control and all his stubborn, infuriating certainty, was still trying to hold the line like he was the only one who knew how.That was the moment something in me finally tipped.Enough.I could feel my pulse beating hard in my throat, not from the pain in my side, not from the blood I knew was still drying under my shirt, but from the rage that had been building for too long to stay contained.He was still refusing to bend.Aria was still trapped in the middle of a choice no mother should ever have to make.And I was still standing here listening to both of them talk like time was some endless thing we

Adrian’s POVFor one second, nobody moved.That was the strange thing about disaster. It did not always arrive with noise first. Sometimes it arrived with a pause. A single, thin second where your brain had to catch up to what your eyes already knew.Julian was frozen in front of Leo’s chamber, one hand still too close to the laser grid, his body locked in that ugly halfway state between action and regret. The red beams had snapped into place so fast that the room seemed to have turned into a cage around him.Then the timer jumped.Not by much.Enough.My stomach dropped hard.I saw it on the feed and heard it in the tone of the bomb. A faster sequence. A sharper warning.Julian’s move had triggered something.Of course it had.I knew exactly what kind of man Julian was in a moment like that. He would rather break the system than admit he needed patience. That kind of instinct could be useful in some places. In here, with Leo strapped to a device and the entire facility already unstab

Aria’s POVThe timer on Adrian’s comms felt like it was burning straight through me.Every time the numbers changed, something in my chest tightened harder. I could not seem to stop looking at it. I knew I should be watching the whole room, the collapsing corridor, the dust, the fire, the way the building kept groaning like it was trying to fold in on itself. I knew I should be thinking clearly.I was not.I was thinking about Leo.Only Leo.My son was still on that screen, still strapped down, still too pale and too still and too far away from me. And the worst part was that I had already seen enough to understand just how little time we had left. Julian had tried something reckless. Veronica had answered by making everything worse. Adrian was at a console somewhere ahead of me, his face hard with concentration, his hands moving like he could force the system to obey him if he only worked fast enough.I wanted to believe that.I needed to believe that.But belief did not stop the tim