บททั้งหมดของ Quiet Reign: บทที่ 51 - บทที่ 58

Selah didn't raise her voice on the phone. She didn't offer explanations, and she didn't allow room for questions. Her voice was a low, freezing sheet of ice that cut clean through the receiver."Get to the brownstone," she told Xavier first, her knuckles white around the edge of the phone. "Bring Marcus. Ten minutes. All hands on deck."She hung up before he could reply, immediately dialing Isaiah. "I need you and Damaris at the house in ten minutes, Cole. Do not make an excuse. Just get here."For the next ten minutes, the brownstone was suffocatingly quiet. Selah stood at the head of the heavy oak dining room table, her posture perfectly rigid, her jaw set. On the polished wood before her rested the single slip of paper Helena had left behind—the handwritten address of Arthur Pendleton’s shadow office. Her left hand rested flat on the table, the raw, uncut black diamond promise ring catching the gray afternoon light filtering through the curtains, a silent testament to the future t

Arthur Pendleton’s face drained of color, his smug composure disintegrating in a fraction of a second. His gaze darted frantically from Damaris’s cold, unblinking eyes down to the glow of his laptop screen. "What did you do?" Pendleton breathed, his voice suddenly thin and strained. He reached out to slam the laptop lid shut, but his hands were shaking. "I didn't do anything, Arthur," Damaris said quietly, taking a step back and folding her arms across her chest with effortless poise. "You did. You executed unverified code on an unauthorized device outside of federal network protocols. The moment that drive mounted, your entire local network was mirrored. Every offshore bank transfer, every encrypted email with your financial backer, every illegal query you ran on me—it’s all sitting on our cloud servers right now." Pendleton lunged out of his chair, his chair skidding violently backward against the concrete wall. His eyes flared with a desperate, wild rage as he reached across the

SilkThe brownstone had quieted down as the midnight hour bled into three in the morning. In the tactical war room downstairs, the screens were still humming softly, running the automated sub-routines Damaris and Marcus had coded to freeze Julian’s secondary credit lines the second the Asian markets opened.Upstairs in the master suite, the storm outside had returned, a low, rumbling thunder shaking the heavy glass windows.Selah stood by the French doors leading to the balcony, her dark velvet robe tied loosely at her waist. She looked out over the rain-slicked city streets, her mind running through every possible counter-move Julian might make when the margin call hit his desk in four hours.A warm, heavy weight settled over her shoulders as a pair of strong arms wrapped around her waist from behind.Xavier pulled her flush against his chest, his signature scent—sandalwood, rain, and distinct, expensive leather—wrapping around her instantly. He rested his chin against the side of he

Morning light broke through the sheer curtains of the master suite, painting the room in soft hues of gold and slate grey. Xavier sat on the edge of the oversized bed, his bare torso lean and lined with muscles, a steaming mug of black coffee resting in his hand. He had been awake since Marcus's three in the morning phone call. His gaze was fixed on Selah, who was sitting across from him in an silk armchair, her dark velvet robe drawn close, her eyes completely locked onto his. "Geneva," Selah said quietly, her voice smooth and deliberate. "So Julian wasn't the mastermind. He was just the local muscle playing with offshore credit lines." "He was an operative with ambition," Xavier agreed, setting his coffee down on the mahogany nightstand. He reached across the small distance between them, taking her right hand into his heavy palm. His thumb brushed over the polished surface promise ring resting on her finger. The weight of that ring was an anchor between them—not yet an engag