Free Web NovelChapter 377: Chapter 377
Lovi’s voice came from behind her, quiet but carrying an edge that stopped the air in the room.
"Because my hand is already resting on the send button right now, Cora. It is sitting right there, and all it requires is the slightest additional pressure."
His voice remained terrifyingly calm. "Don’t push me on this. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that because you’ve delivered a very impressive speech, the situation has somehow changed. It hasn’t. Nothing has changed. The only thing that has changed is how close you are to finding out exactly what I’m capable of."
Cora’s footsteps slowed but did not stop.
"I wanted to go easy on you tonight," he continued, and there was something in his voice now that sounded almost regretful - the tone of a man who genuinely wished things had gone differently and was about to do something he could frame as her fault.
"I genuinely did. But you have pushed me, Cora. You’ve pushed me further than I intended to be pushed tonight, and now I find myself in a position where I need to demonstrate something to you. I need to show you - not tell you, not threaten you, but actually show you - exactly what it looks like when I decide to act."
He looked down at his laptop, and his finger hovered over the keyboard for one final, weighted second.
"Just a small demonstration," he said softly. "So you understand that none of what I said was decoration."
And then he clicked send.
At that moment, Cora’s body betrayed her intentions before her mind could fully authorize the decision.
She stopped walking.
Her heels, which had been carrying her steadily and determinedly toward the exit just seconds earlier, came to a halt against the concrete floor. The sound of her movement ceased abruptly, replaced by a silence that felt thick and suffocating, and despite every instinct screaming at her to keep moving, to walk through that door and leave this place behind without looking back, she found herself unable to do it.
She turned around slowly, her movements controlled and deliberate even as her heart hammered violently in her chest.
The moment she completed the turn and faced him again, Lovi’s expression shifted into something triumphant. He nodded his head slowly, his smile spreading wider across his face with the satisfied pleasure of someone whose prediction had just been confirmed in real time.
"I knew it," he said, his voice warm with vindication. "I knew you were going to turn around. I knew that the moment you heard that click, the moment you understood that I had actually done what I said I would do, your feet would stop moving and you would come back."
He gestured toward his laptop screen with one casual wave of his hand.
"But you should understand something, Cora - what I just sent is only the beginning. Just a small taste. A tip of the iceberg, as they say."
His smile never wavered.
"I am very, very certain that in less than three minutes from now - maybe two, depending on how quickly people check their inboxes - every single person who works for you, every staff member in your company, everyone who has ever trusted you or looked up to you or believed in the vision you’ve been selling them, is going to be seeing exactly what we did together. They are going to be seeing what your family is truly made of beneath all the polish and the prestige."
He leaned back in his chair, his posture radiating confidence.
"So tell me, Cora - are you understanding my position now? Are you finally grasping that there is no room for negotiation here, no clever angle you can work, no exit strategy you can deploy? Are you understanding that clearly?"
Cora stood there in the center of the warehouse, her face frozen in an expression that was impossible to read - not blank, not shocked, but something more complicated than either of those things. Her eyes were locked on Lovi but also seemed to be looking through him, or past him, toward something only she could see.
She said nothing.
Deep down, buried beneath the layers of composure she was fighting desperately to maintain, there was only one thought cycling through her mind on an endless, urgent loop: fгeewёbnoѵel.cσm
*Oliver, please. Please let what you told me work. Please let it actually work the way you said it would.*
Because she was not going to give Lovi what he wanted. She was not going to surrender to this, not going to let him win, not going to allow this disgusting excuse for a man to believe even for one second that he had successfully broken her will.
But the only way that refusal meant anything - the only way it had substance rather than just being empty defiance that would cost her everything - was if Oliver had been telling the truth when he said he could handle this. If the plan they had discussed, the contingency they had quietly put in place, was real and functional and capable of doing what he promised it could do.
That was her only option now. Her only path forward.
And so she stood there in silence, outwardly still, inwardly praying with an intensity she had not felt in years.
Lovi watched her for a long moment, clearly savoring the silence, clearly interpreting it as exactly the kind of defeated resignation he had been hoping to produce. His smile softened slightly, taking on something that might have been intended as compassion or understanding, though it looked more like condescension from where Cora was standing.
"I knew you were going to go quiet like this," he said, his voice almost gentle now. "I knew that once you saw that I was serious - once you understood that this was not a bluff or an empty threat but an actual action with actual consequences - you would go quiet and still, because the reality of it would be too large to process all at once."
He nodded slowly.
"And I want you to know that I understand that. I genuinely do." He paused. "But now that I have done what I said I would do, now that I’ve demonstrated my willingness and my capability to follow through on exactly what I promised, I find that I have changed my mind about certain things." fɾēewebnσveℓ.com
Cora’s eyes sharpened slightly, focusing on him with renewed attention.
"I told you earlier that I wanted a relationship with you," he continued, his tone shifting into something more businesslike. "And that is still true. That has not changed. But I have realized something in the past few minutes - realized it clearly enough that I need to adjust my approach accordingly."
