Alpha's Regret: The Seventh Time was Forever

Chapter 234 - you’re going to regret every year we’ve been friends

"Five hundred is the floor," Voren said. No posturing in it at all. "I’m not going lower."

Seraphine was quiet for a moment, looking at him the way you look at something you need to think about from more than one angle.

"MindNest is stable," she said finally. "I have plans for other companies eventually. But there’s something else I’m focused on, and that’s finding my daughter. And when I do, she becomes everything. The business, the city, all of it drops to second place."

She held his gaze. "That’s why Corvine has the CEO title. He can carry it without me with all the human resource we have put in place together. So I’m asking you honestly, knowing I could leave the country and not look back, do you still want to put five hundred billion into something I might walk away from?"

If Bryan had truly been Ravyn’s biological child, none of this would have spiraled this far out of control. She knew that deep down, in that quiet, stubborn place she usually avoided touching, but reality wasn’t something she could keep dodging forever, especially not now when the truth was already inching its way toward the surface, threatening to tear everything open at the worst possible moment.

And that looming exposure, pressed against her chest like a weight she couldn’t shake off, driving her into a kind of desperation that made her thoughts sharper, more frantic, and more dangerous.

Because now, it wasn’t just about hiding anymore, but rather moving faster than the truth itself.

She needed to find her daughter and hide her somewhere safe before Ravyn finds out the truth about Bryan.

So her plan, reckless as it felt, began to take shape with a chilling clarity.

The word ’leave’ moved through Voren in a way he didn’t have clean language for. Something that arrived without permission and settled somewhere it hadn’t been invited. He kept his face exactly where it was.

"Where would you go?"

"Why does that matter to you?" She asked flatly, no heat in it. Just clean and direct. "Because of the shares? That’s not enough of a reason for me to map out my future for you. I don’t stay in predictable lanes and I won’t pretend otherwise just to make this easier for you."

her with the attention of a man who’d spent enough time in rooms with powerful people to know

The version of her who had maneuvered him into that corner with such patient, precise efficiency that

wanted him at the table and worked for it. And now here she was telling him the table might

was genuinely

said, and there was something close to

had been properly weighed. "I’ll take the risk. Give me a week to move the funds. And as far as I’m concerned,

Seraphine corrected immediately, with a precision that left

looked at her.

She asked curious,

evenly, giving nothing away. "I was going to take you somewhere tonight, but you look tired. Tomorrow," he said with certainty, like it

with Damon." She paused. "And how am I supposed to know anything I’ve

the contract when we formalize the increase," he said, with the brisk efficiency of a man who’d already drafted this in his head. "If

was slow and longer than she meant it to be. "That works." She set her napkin on the

"Of course."

set a thick fold of bills on the

is complimentary. The house

manager that I don’t accept free things." This never happened when he came with Ravyn so

in before he felt her pull away, and the awareness of what he’d done arrived with the particular, unwelcome clarity of something obvious

She said nothing. They walked

of quiet that makes it clear what’s