Lahat ng Kabanata ng Married To The Devil I Betrayed: Kabanata 71 - Kabanata 80

The second wave hit harder than the first.By Monday morning, the original article had spread beyond financial circles and into mainstream business media. What began as quiet speculation had evolved into televised discussions, market commentary, and carefully worded questions that all circled the same possibility without fully naming it.What if the Moretti espionage case had been manipulated from the beginning?The phrasing changed depending on the outlet.The implication did not.Screens glowed across trading floors and executive offices with Elena’s photograph again - older images pulled from archived coverage, her expression frozen forever in that brutal season of public humiliation.Lucian saw it the moment he stepped into Moretti headquarters.The lobby television had been muted, but the headline scrolling beneath the anchor was enough.MORETTI INDUSTRIES UNDER SCRUTINY AS QUESTIONS RESURFACE ABOUT HISTORIC INTERNAL INVESTIGATIONEmployees pretended not to look at him as he cros

The first reporter appeared outside Eli’s school on Wednesday morning.Not openly aggressive.Not yet.A woman in a beige coat standing across the street with sunglasses, a phone in her hand, and the kind of practiced casualness that immediately made Elena suspicious the moment she stepped out of the car.Eli was halfway through unfastening his seatbelt when Elena touched his arm lightly.“Wait.”He blinked at her.“What?”“Nothing.” Her eyes remained fixed across the street. “Just give me a second.”The woman looked away too quickly when their eyes met.That was enough.A cold heaviness settled into Elena’s chest.Not panic, recognition.Because she knew what this looked like. She remembered the slow escalation from years ago, the way curiosity disguised itself as coincidence before evolving into intrusion.And now that attention was drifting toward her son.Lucian, seated beside her, followed her line of sight immediately.His expression darkened almost instantly.“Do you know her?”

By Thursday morning, Eli understood one thing clearly.Something was wrong.Not the kind of wrong adults explained with calm voices and forced smiles.A different kind.The kind that lived in silences.It was there in the way his mother checked the windows before leaving the apartment now. In the security guard downstairs suddenly greeting him by name every morning. In the way Lucian’s car appeared almost constantly outside the building, as though he no longer trusted distance.And most of all, it was in the way conversations stopped whenever he walked into a room.Children noticed pauses more than words.That was what adults never understood.Eli sat quietly at the breakfast counter while Elena searched distractedly through her handbag for her office badge.“You forgot your coffee,” he said.She blinked as though returning from somewhere far away.“What?”“Your coffee.”“Oh.” She looked down at the mug beside her untouched. “Right.”Lucian stood near the kitchen doorway scrolling thr

The apartment fell into a silence so complete that even the distant sound of traffic outside seemed strangely loud.Eli still stood near the sofa holding the photograph carefully in both hands while Lucian remained motionless several feet away.Neither spoke immediately.The picture suddenly felt far more dangerous than it should have.Eli looked back down at it again.His mother looked younger in the photo. Happier too. Lucian stood beside her with one hand resting lightly against her waist while Elena laughed at something outside the frame.Not posed.Natural.The kind of closeness people didn’t fake.“How long ago was this?” Eli finally asked quietly.Lucian’s throat tightened slightly.“About six years.”Eli frowned faintly as though mentally calculating something.Then his eyes lifted again.“You kept it?”There was no accusation in the question.Only curiosity.Lucian stepped closer slowly.“Yes.”“Why?”Before Lucian could answer, Elena appeared in the hallway doorway.The mome

For several long seconds after the message appeared on Lucian’s phone, neither of them moved.The apartment seemed to fall into a terrible stillness around them.Elena stared at the photograph of Eli leaving school while cold fear spread slowly through her chest like poison. The image itself was ordinary at first glance. Eli adjusting the strap of his backpack near the front gates. Students blurred around him. Afternoon sunlight catching against parked cars.But the angle of the photograph made it horrifying.Whoever took it had been watching him.Watching carefully.Watching long enough to wait for the right moment.Elena looked up sharply.“Who sent that?”Lucian’s expression had gone frighteningly calm.“I don’t know yet.”Yet.Not if.His voice alone told her how serious this had become.Lucian was already moving before she fully processed it. One quick call after another. Quiet instructions delivered with deadly precision.“I want every exterior camera from the school perimeter p