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."

with powerful people to know the difference between someone performing

thought about the Sovereign Circle meeting. The version of her who had maneuvered him into that corner with such patient, precise efficiency that by

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

contradiction was

he said, and there was something

beat, and then something in him settled quietly, like a decision that had been properly weighed.

that left exactly zero interpretive room. "That is all this

her. "You

are you implying?" She asked

you somewhere tonight, but you look tired. Tomorrow," he said with certainty, like it was

go over with Damon." She paused. "And how am I supposed to know anything I’ve told you tonight actually stays between

already drafted this in his head. "If I disclose anything about your personal situation

meant it to be. "That works." She set her napkin on the table. "There’s nothing else to cover.

"Of course."

fold of bills on the table without asking

Voren, tonight is complimentary. The house

a conversation. "Tell the manager that I don’t accept free things."

in before he felt her pull away, and

said nothing. She said nothing. They

and spoke quietly to the receptionist, the kind of quiet that makes it clear