The Billionaire's Revenge Bride

Chapter Twelve

The elevator ride down to the deep bedrock vault of Zurich felt like sinking into hell, and the cold steel walls offered no comfort. The heavy, metallic bang of the automated security door dropping behind us had cut me off from Lucian, leaving me alone in the dim, red emergency light with a woman who had been dead for six years.

Evelyn stepped toward me, her leather jacket creaking in the silence. The curved tactical knife in her hand caught the crimson glow, its blade reflecting a jagged line across her scarred throat.

"Six years, counselor," she rasped, her damaged voice scraping against my nerves. "Six years of rotting in Mexico while you slept in Tobias’s bed and signed off on the hush money that kept me buried. Did you think a luxury suit and a new wedding ring could wash that blood off your hands?"

My heart hammered against my ribs, but I didn't back down. The fear was there, sharp and paralyzing, but beneath it was the fierce instinct of a mother carrying two fragile miracles. Superfetation. Two tiny heartbeats, one belonging to the man trying to break down the titanium wall behind us, and one belonging to the monster who had started this war.

"I didn't know, Evelyn," I said, my voice steady despite the trembling in my knees. "Tobias falsified the legal briefs. I thought I was defending a wrongful arrest. If I had known what he did to you and what he did to Lucian, I would have burned his empire to the ground six years ago."

"Ignorance is a luxury the dead can't afford!" she shrieked, lunging forward.

I didn't think so. I dodged to the left, my heels slipping slightly on the smooth floor plates. The blade sliced through the empty air where my shoulder had been, grazing the fabric of my gray blazer. Before she could reset her stance, I grabbed her wrist with both hands, using her own momentum to slam her against the reinforced glass of the reception console.

The knife clattered to the floor, sliding beneath the heavy iron grates of the ventilation system.

Evelyn gasped, coughing as the physical strain caught up to her damaged lungs. She collapsed against the wall, her eyes wide, the manic fury suddenly draining out of her, leaving only a hollow, exhausted shell.

"He never loved me," she whispered, staring blankly at the ceiling. "Tobias... he didn't save me from that ditch because he cared. He saved me to use as a weapon if Luke ever got too powerful. It was just an insurance policy."

A sudden, deafening screech tore through the corridor. The titanium fire door groaned as the lock mechanism began to warp.

The emergency lights flared white, and with a heavy hydraulic hiss, the door swung open. Lucian stood in the threshold, his white dress shirt torn at the collar, his chest heaving as he held a heavy steel security bar he had used to pry the automated seals apart. His gray eyes swept the room, bypassing the fallen mercenaries, bypassing Evelyn, until they locked entirely onto me.

In three massive, predatory strides, he closed the distance. His large, scarred hands gripped my waist, pulling me so hard against his chest that I could feel the frantic, territorial drumming of his heart.

"Are you hurt?" His voice was a raw, ragged growl, his thumb tracing my jawline to check for blood. "Tell me, Lily."

"I’m fine," I breathed, wrapping my arms around his neck, burying my face in the familiar scent of leather and sandalwood. "I’m fine. Lucian, the children..."

He pulled back just enough to look down at my stomach, his expression fracturing into a fierce, protective vulnerability. He placed his warm, heavy palm over my abdomen. "The Hells Angels just secured the surface. The doctor was a Syndicate plant, but he’s contained. The safe house in California is secure. Melissa and Ava are safe."

He turned his head slowly, his gaze landing on Evelyn, who was still huddled on the floor. The coldness that settled over his face was absolute, the mask of the ruthless Shadow CEO locking back into place.

"Luke..." Evelyn whispered, reaching a trembling hand toward him.

"Luke died on the Pacific Coast Highway six years ago," Lucian said, his voice dropping into a chilly, unyielding register. "The man standing here is Lucian Knight. And the only woman who carries my name is standing right beside me."

He didn't draw a weapon. He didn't need to. He reached into his pocket and tossed the digital ledger, the one containing the master encryption keys to Tobias’s offshore billions at her feet.

"Take the money, Evelyn. The Syndicate accounts are unfrozen. Take the fifty million and disappear into the European underworld. If I ever see your face in California, or if your name ever shadows my wife again, I won't use the law to bury you. Do you understand?"

Evelyn stared at the glowing device, her fingers slowly curling around it. She let out a dry, raspy laugh, nodding as she realized the ghost story was finally over. The past was paid in full.

Lucian didn't wait for her reply. He wrapped his arm firmly around my waist, anchoring me to his side as he steered me toward the elevator.

"Let's go home, Lily," he murmured against my hair, his grip tightening with a pure, possessive hunger. "It’s time to end the Prescott name for good."

The flight back to Los Angeles was a private kingdom of forced isolation. At thirty thousand feet, the world was nothing but a sea of black clouds, but inside the main cabin of the Knight jet, the real storm was sitting right across from me.

I had changed into a soft, cream silk robe, my long hair draped over my shoulders as I stared out the window. I looked fragile, a sharp contrast to the fierce "Lioness" who had negotiated her way out of a Syndicate ambush on a foggy highway, but I knew better. I had dismantled a media dynasty with a pen, and I was currently carrying the future of two bloodlines.

Lucian crossed the cabin, setting his untouched glass of bourbon on the mahogany table before sitting directly across from me. He reached out, his calloused fingers catching my chin, gently forcing me to look at me.

"You haven't spoken since we left Zurich," he said, his voice low. "The doctors said the stress was high, but the heartbeats are stable. Both of them."

My eyes, normally so sharp and calculating, filled with a deep, aching conflict. "Both of them, Lucian. That’s the problem. The media is already calling it the scandal of the century. Tobias's old guard has leaked the prenatal timeline to the high-society boards in Bel-Air. They’re saying the Chief Legal Officer of the Knight Holdings slept with her husband’s rival to secure a corporate buyout."

A dark, dangerous heat flared in his chest. "Let them talk. By noon tomorrow, the court will finalize the corporate restructuring. Tobias’s remaining five percent is being absorbed into your personal trust. You own the Prescott legacy now, Lily. Not him. And certainly not his corrupt board."

"And the child?" I whispered, my hand dropping to my stomach. "Tobias’s son? How can we raise him in your tower when every board meeting, every paparazzi lens, will be looking for his father's ghost in his face?"

Lucian leaned forward, sliding off the leather seat to kneel on the floor before me, mirroring the position I had taken in Zurich. He gripped both of my hands, forcing them flat against my lap, his gaze locked onto mine with a fierce, absolute possessiveness that I could no longer hide behind a contract.

"Tobias Prescott is a dead man walking in a federal penitentiary," he growled, my jaw tightening. "His legacy ends the moment that child takes his first breath. He will not be a Prescott. He will be a Knight. I will put my name on his birth certificate, I will put my wealth in his trust, and I will teach him to look at the Prescott empire as nothing more than a footstool for his brother."

My breath hitched, a tear finally escaping her eye. "You would do that? For a child that isn't yours?"

"He is yours," Lucian murmured, His hand sliding up my jaw, my thumb wiping the tear away with an uncharacteristic tenderness that terrified me. "And everything that belongs to you belongs to me. I spent six years chasing a ghost because I thought my bloodline was dead. You gave me a miracle, Lily. If the price of keeping my son safe is raising his twin as my own, then I will build an empire big enough for both of them to rule."

He pulled me down into his arms, his lips finding mine in a deep, demanding claim that wasn't about revenge or business. It was about survival. It was about the fact that this brilliant, dangerous woman had become the center of his universe, and he would burn the city to ashes before he let anyone take me from his cage.