Semua Bab The Billionaire’s Stolen Bride: Bab 51 - Bab 60

POV: Lena MorettiI found a compatible card reader at a thrift shop in town. Three dollars. The old kind with a USB port and a slot for the memory card format my mother had used. The teenager behind the counter looked at it like an artifact from another century. I brought it back to the cottage and plugged it into my laptop and sat at the kitchen table with my hands flat on the surface, steadying myself.The first memory card loaded slowly. Old files. Low quality audio. The kind of recordings made by a small device hidden in a pocket or a purse, capturing voices through fabric and distance. I put in my earbuds and pressed play.My mother's voice filled my head. Not the faded memory I carried of her voice, soft and imprecise around the edges after ten years of erosion. Her actual voice. Clear and present and alive in my ears as if she were standing beside me. The specific tone she used when she was afraid but refusing to show it. The cadence of her sentences, slightly faster than norma

POV: Lena Moretti Six months. The belly was real now. Not the subtle curve I could hide under loose shirts. A proper bump that announced itself when I walked and shifted my center of gravity and made tying my shoes an athletic event. The midwife, a woman named Ruth who worked out of a clinic on the edge of town and asked exactly zero questions about why a pregnant woman had appeared in Cambria alone with cash and a name that didn't quite fit her face, told me the baby was healthy. Growing on schedule. Strong heartbeat. Everything where it should be. I'd built a life here. Not a permanent one. Not a real one. But something that functioned. I woke at six, before the nausea hit. Crackers. Water. A slow walk along the coastal path while the town was still waking up. Then work at the kitchen table until noon. Lunch at the coffee shop on Main Street, where the owner, a woman named Grace, knew me as Sarah and made me decaf without being asked and never commented on the growing belly or the

POV: Lena Moretti The case file was four hundred and twelve pages long. I knew because I'd counted. Four hundred and twelve pages of financial analysis, document reproductions, timeline reconstructions, transcribed recordings, and witness statements that told the story of Victor Crane's thirty-year predation machine from beginning to end. My mother started the work. I finished it. And the result was sitting on my laptop in a folder labeled "Final Submission" waiting for the one person who could turn paper into prosecution. Catherine Wells agreed to a phone call on a Friday afternoon. Encrypted line. No names at first. She'd reviewed the preliminary summary I'd sent weeks ago and wanted to hear the full scope before committing resources. Her voice was direct and measured, the voice of a woman who had prosecuted enough powerful people to know that enthusiasm without evidence was useless and evidence without caution was dangerous. "Walk me through what you have," she said. I walked h

POV: Lena Moretti She found me on the second day. I was walking back from Grace's coffee shop with a paper bag of pastries and a decaf in my hand when I turned the corner onto my street and saw her standing on the cottage porch. Gianna. In a wrinkled blouse and jeans that looked like she'd slept in them. Her hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail. No makeup. No polished presentation. She looked like someone who'd been driving and watching and deciding for forty-eight hours without a plan. My body reacted before my brain. The paper bag tightened in my grip. My free hand went to my stomach. The protective reflex that I couldn't suppress even when I tried. She saw both responses. Her eyes tracked from my face to my belly, which at six months was beyond any possible denial, and something moved across her expression. Not surprise. She already knew about the pregnancy. But seeing it in person was different from deducing it from behavioral observations. The physical reality of my body ca

POV: Lena Moretti He knocked at dawn. I knew it was him before I opened the door because Naomi had texted me at 2 AM: "He left immediately. Driving. Wouldn't wait for morning. ETA approximately 6 AM." Four hours of driving through the dark. No security team. No Dominic. No plan except getting to me as fast as the road allowed. I'd been awake since the text. Sitting at the kitchen table with my hands wrapped around a mug of tea that had gone cold an hour ago. Waiting. Running through versions of the conversation in my head. What I'd say. What he'd say. How I'd keep my composure when the man I'd left standing at a window thirty floors up saw for the first time what his absence had been growing into. Three knocks. Quiet. Not demanding. The knock of a man who wasn't sure he'd be let in and was bracing for the possibility that he wouldn't. I stood up. Walked to the door. My hand rested on the knob for three seconds while I took a breath. Then I opened it. He was thinner. That was the