Chapter b218 /b

bChapter 218 /b

ADRIAN’S POV

My eyes were wide open, unblinking, fixed on the screen in front of me. My hand gripped the armrest of the couch so tightly bthat /bbmy /bknuckles turned white, veins bulging with tension. I could feel my heartbeat pounding in my chest like a war drum, loud and frantic. All of it, the tight grip, the racing pulse, the heat crawling up my neck was because of what I was staring at on the television.

“What is this? How is this possible?” I asked, my voice uneven, trembling with a mix of fear and disbelief.

In all my years through every deal I sealed, every n I executed, every enemy I crushed, nothing had ever made me feel this level of shock. Never. As the CEO of Westwood Corporation, I had always been the one delivering the blows, never the one receiving them. I was the one who gave orders, who watched chaos unfold from a distance, untouched. But this… this was different.

My mind was racing, trying to make sense of what I was seeing, but the harder I thought, the less sense it made. Nothing about what was ying out on the screen could be real. It was impossible. My breath grew shallow. My jaw tightened. My hand let go of the couch only to move faster, grabbing James by the cor.

“Are you seeing this? How is she still standing?” I demanded, my grip on James‘ cor tightening with every syble. My eyes were wide and unblinking, still locked on the image of her.

James didn’t move, didn’t pull away. His face mirrored mine, shocked, confused, pale. “Calm down, Adriani,” /ihe said, though his voice wasn’t as steady as he wanted it to be. “I’m just as shocked as you are, but I don’t have the answer to your question right now. I don’t think anyone does.”

I released his cor and slowly took a step back. My eyes remained fixed on the screen, glued to the figure that had shattered my entire sense of control in one appearance.

We stood there in the living room, James and I, not saying another word. We just… stared.

Because on that television screen was someone I thought I’d buried in the past. Someone I thought I’d never see again in this lifetime. Someone I was certain was dead.

“Olivia.” The name barely escaped my lips. It wasn’t even a full whisper, it was breath and disbeliefbined.

Olivia Grayson. Alive. Not in a video, not in a rumor, not in a distant memory… but alive, breathing, standing under the sun and facing

cameras.

“Turn up the volume,” I said suddenly, my voice sharper this time. “Now. Turn it up.”

James quickly grabbed the remote and increased the volume. The background noise filled the room, muffled voices, camera shutters, the hum of a busy event.

She stood in front of arge building, modern, towering, freshly painted. It looked like apany, a new branch perhaps. She wasn’t alone. There was an old man beside her, tall, well–dressed, his white hair neatly slicked back. He looked oddly familiar, though I couldn’t ce bhis /b

name just yet. And to her right was another man, maybe in his early thirties, standing confidently with a straight posture, dressed designer suit.

“What is happening?” I murmured to myself, the words nearly lost beneath the rising sound of the broadcast. “And how the hell is bOlivia /bstill

alive?”

The camera zoomed in as the old man stepped forward to speak into the cluster of microphones in front of him.

James turned up the volume a little more until the old

I man’s voice echoed clearly in bthe /broom.

b1/3 /b

“As you all know, ke Enterprise has been working on this building for over a year, the old man began. His voice was calmb, /bauthorit the s “Yes, there were moments when construction slowed down, but all that is in the past now. This particr branch of ke bEnterprise /bis bspecial/b. It’s special because it marks a milestone, this is the fiftieth branch we’ve built across the globeb” /b

Apuse erupted around him. The camera panned over the audience businessmen and women, press, investors. Everyone pped with pride and admiration.

But their pping, their smiles, the significance of the announcement, none of it mattered to me. Not one bit.

He said ke Enterprise. That name… ke… I’ve heard it before. It rang like a dull bell somewhere in the back of my mind, scratching at the surface of my memory, but no matter how hard I tried to focus on it, I just couldn’t seem to ce exactly w

where or when I’d heard it. It bwas /blike a word I had read once in a newspaper or heard in passing at a board meeting, familiar, but distant.

“And now…” his voice continued, pulling

back out of the fog of confusion and into the present.

“…the CEO of ke Enterprise is going toe up and give a special speech, my daughter, Olivia ke,” the old man’s voice announced proudly.

Another wave, no, a tsunami of shock crashed through my entire body, stiffening my spine and sending a chill down my arms as Olivia

walked forward, closer to the microphone. Her presence, her face, her posture it was all unmistakable. My breathing faltered for a second bas /bleaned forward, staring intently at the screen.

“What?” James blurted out from beside me, his voiceced with raw disbelief.

This… this can’t be happening. It can’t be possible. Her parents… I killed them. I know I did. So how in the hell is she still standing there? How is she alive, and smiling, and now the daughter of some powerful old man I’ve never met before?

Then it hit me hard, like a rock mming into my skull. I hadpletely forgotten. Maybe not forgotten, but I had buried it. When I thought Olivia had died, I forced myself to erase every memory of her from my mind coldly,pletely. But now, it was all rushing back. That day, years ago when Sam Grayson, the man I always believed was her father, suffered a heart attack. That day… I found out that the Graysons

weren’t her biological parents at all.

I gasped slightly, as if the air had suddenly be heavy. My hand slowly went up and through my hair, fingers trembling as I ran them through the strands. My jaw stayed ck, mouth slightly y open,pletely incapable of closing from the weight of the shock pressing on me.

So not only is she alive… but she’s found her real parents? Not just that, she’s now the CEO of ke Enterprise?

What in the actual fuck is going on?

“I thought her parents were dead. The hell, I thought she was dead,” James muttered again, eyes still glued to the screen as he tried to make sense of what we were both witnessing. “So… what’s going on?”

I didn’t respond. I couldn’t. Because, truthfully, I didn’t have any answers either.

I couldn’t exin the emotions surging through me in that moment. Anger. Disbelief. Curiosity. Relief. Was I… happy to see that she was alive? That she had made it through? That she had risen back up, even stronger than before?

It’s been over five long years since Istid eyes on her. Five years since I believed she went away from this world forever, buned and burned in the consequences of the choices we both made. And now, right in front of me, in the full light of the sun, Olivia was standing tall and bproud /blike nothing could break her.

I did feel… some kind of strange, unexinable relief seeing her again. A small part of me that I thought had died years ago bstirred /bbdeep /binside, confused and shaken.

And something was different about her, very different. It wasn’t just the clothes or the way she carried herself bnow/bb, /bblike /bba /bbwoman /bbwith /bbpower /band control. No, it was something deeper. It was in her eyes, in her aura. She was glowing under the bsun/bb, /bbradiating /bbsomething /bbpowerful /bband /b

sharp.

She looked… more beautiful than I had ever seen her before, even after all these years.

And as I stared at her on that screen, I realized something chilling, this wasn’t just a return.

iB /i