Chapter: Chapter 201The night reeked of rust and rain.Steel groaned as Adrien pried open the side door of the derelict train station, its hinges crying out after years of neglect. The air was sharp with cold metal and wet dust the kind of emptiness that swallowed sound. Somewhere far beyond the cracked walls, the city hummed in restless ignorance.Ryan followed close behind, his flashlight cutting through the dark like a blade. The beam landed on the skeletal remains of old train cars hollow, stripped of color, their paint flaking like dead skin. “You sure this is where he’ll come?” he whispered.Adrien’s voice was low, steady. “He won’t resist.”The trap was elegant in its simplicity: a broadcast of fake intel about a “final handoff” of Viktor’s stolen evidence, planted in the same encrypted channels Viktor once used to bait his own victims. The digital trail led here the ghost station beneath the city’s oldest rail line.Adrien checked his watch. Midnight, exactly. “He’ll be on time.”Ryan studied him
Last Updated: 2025-10-26
Chapter: Chapter 200The screen flickered as Ryan scrolled deeper into the “NOVAK” archive. Each folder opened another wound old surveillance footage, training simulations, files labeled Phase I Conditioning, Phase II: Repetition, Phase III: Replacement. Adrien’s name wasn’t just there it was everywhere.“Stop,” Adrien rasped, his voice shaking. “Turn it off.”Ryan hesitated. The last folder was timestamped five years ago. “Adrien, there’s one more”“Turn it off.” Adrien’s tone was sharp, desperate. His hands trembled as he stepped back from the screen, pacing the small safehouse room like a trapped animal. “He… he didn’t just train me. He built me.”Ryan stood, uncertain, his heart twisting at the sight. “You were a kid You didn’t know”Adrien slammed his fist into the wall. “That’s not an excuse! Every choice I made every move I thought was mine he was already there. Calculating. Predicting. Watching.” He let out a bitter laugh. “I was his prototype. His perfect little successor.”Ryan approached slowly
Last Updated: 2025-10-26
Chapter: Chapter 199Adrien’s hands were already moving before Ryan could speak grabbing cables, reconnecting the power, forcing the broken workstation to life. Smoke rose from the shattered casing, but the screens flickered back on, one by one, stuttering to green.“He’s initiating the data release early,” Adrien muttered, voice clipped. “We have less than fifteen minutes before it goes global.”Ryan stood behind him, trying to keep up. The fractured glow from the monitors cast both of them in cold light, their reflections ghosted against the glass walls. “Fifteen minutes? Adrien the servers are gone. You smashed the CPU”“It doesn’t matter,” Adrien cut in. “He mirrored it. There’s still a remote key somewhere in the system.”His fingers flew across the keyboard, typing faster than Ryan could follow. The screen filled with encrypted scripts command lines buried under firewalls, a digital maze built by the same mind that built him.“Come on…” Adrien’s tone dropped to a growl. “Show me where you’re hiding
Last Updated: 2025-10-25
Chapter: Chapter 198The glow from the monitors painted the room in cold blue light, slicing across Adrien’s sharp profile as he stared at the screen. Lines of encrypted data scrolled endlessly, each one a thread leading deeper into his web.Ryan sat beside him, the rhythm of keystrokes and quiet breathing the only sound. He’d been at this for hours, tracing every code variation Hale left behind ghosted breadcrumbs of a man too careful to leave a trail but desperate enough to try.“There,” Ryan murmured, leaning forward. “Port 6889. That’s where the data stream splits off. If Hale was sending something hidden, it’s buried there.”Adrien’s eyes flicked to him, admiration blending with exhaustion. “You caught that faster than I did.”Ryan allowed himself a small grin. “Guess I’m learning from the best.”Adrien didn’t answer, but his mouth curved slightly. Then, just as the code broke open, a new window flooded the screen a hidden folder./ScepterArchive_01/Adrien’s breath stilled. “That’s one of Viktor’s o
Last Updated: 2025-10-25
Chapter: Chapter 197The air inside the new safehouse was heavy with static like the silence before a storm. Adrien hadn’t slept. He sat cross-legged on the floor, eyes locked on Hale’s encrypted drive looping the same corrupted data over and over Every attempt to decode it only deepened the digital noise.Ryan hovered nearby, a cup of untouched coffee cooling beside him. The dim lamplight made the dark circles under his eyes more pronounced. “You’ve been at it for four hours,” he said softly.Adrien didn’t look up. “Encryption this complex isn’t meant to be cracked. It’s meant to bury itself if handled wrong.”“Meaning if you mess up, it self destructs?”“Exactly.” Adrien leaned closer, scanning the shifting lines of code. “Hale used a split key cipher. Half the algorithm is stored locally; the other half was buried remotely. If we find the host server, we can unlock everything.”Ryan studied the flickering monitor. “Where would he keep something like that?”Adrien hesitated. “Not where. Who. Hale never
Last Updated: 2025-10-25
Chapter: Chapter 196The rain had started again by the time they reached the outskirts of the city not the furious kind that soaked through everything, but a quiet drizzle that whispered across the empty roads. The hum of the engine filled the silence as Adrien steered the car through backstreets only someone like him would know.Ryan sat in the passenger seat, fingers tapping restlessly against his thigh. The glow from the dashboard painted Adrien’s face in muted blue, highlighting the sharp lines of concentration. He hadn’t spoken in almost ten minutes.Finally, Ryan broke the silence. “You’ve driven this route before.”Adrien didn’t look at him. “A long time ago.”“With him?”A brief pause. Then: “Yeah.”Ryan exhaled slowly. “You think Hale knew this was coming?”Adrien’s grip on the wheel tightened. “He always said if Viktor couldn’t buy someone, he’d break them. Hale knew that better than anyone.”They turned down a deserted lane, the streetlights thinning until the city felt like a memory. The coord
Last Updated: 2025-10-24
His Name Was Never Mine
He stole my name. Then he tried to steal my life. But he’ll never steal my heart will he?”
When August Hale, a quiet literature student with a past he tries to forget, transfers to a prestigious university under a scholarship, all he wants is to stay invisible, graduate, and move on. But his plan falls apart the moment he discovers another student on campus using his exact full name.
Same name. Same birthday. Same hometown.
But this August Hale is wealthy, charming, and cruel and he already knows too much.
At first, August thinks it’s a prank. A coincidence.
Until he starts losing things
His place in classes
His reputation
His identity
The fake August Hale, whose real name is Sebastian Wolfe, is playing a dangerous game. And when he sets his sights on the real August, obsession begins to blur the line between identity theft and romantic fixation.
August wants answers.
Sebastian wants August.
But as August begins to dig into Sebastian’s past, he unearths something much darker than he expected a twisted reason why Sebastian chose him and why he can’t let him go.
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Chapter: Chapter 66: Echoes in the dark August sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the faint glow of his phone screen. It was late past midnight but sleep hadn’t come easy in days. The message notification at the top of the screen blinked like a warning light, one he’d tried to ignore but couldn’t.Ash: We need to talk. Please, August. Don’t let him twist you. I know who Sebastian really is.August exhaled shakily and set the phone face down on the duvet. His pulse was unsteady, his chest tight. For days, Ash had lingered at the edges of his life like a shadow that refused to disperse. He said he was trying to save him, that Sebastian was dangerous, manipulative but Sebastian had already explained everything. He’d looked August in the eye and promised that Ash was lying. That Ash wanted to destroy what they had.And August had chosen to believe him.Still, the weight of Ash’s words clung to him like smoke.“Still awake?” Sebastian’s voice broke the silence. He was leaning against the doorway, his shirt half buttoned, ha
Last Updated: 2025-08-20
Chapter: Chapter 65: Tighter Chains Tighter ChainsThe morning crept in slow and heavy, light cutting across the curtains in fractured lines. August stirred in the bed, blinking against the pale glow, his hand still wound tight from the jerking of phone from his hand of last night. The heated argument the look in Sebastian’s eyes it all replayed in jagged fragments.For a moment, the bed beside him felt cold, empty. Panic flickered through his chest until he caught the sound of footsteps returning. The door eased open, and Sebastian stood there, hair disheveled, shirt halfway buttoned, a coffee cup in one hand.He didn’t look like the sharp, untouchable man who could command a room. He looked… tired. Human.“Morning,” Sebastian said quietly, setting the cup down on the nightstand. His voice carried none of the sharp edges from before, only a tentative weight.August sat up, pulling the blanket tighter around him. “You’re back early.Sebastian nodded, slipping onto the edge of the bed. For a long moment, he just stared
Last Updated: 2025-08-19
Chapter: Chapter 64: Fractures at Midnight The night was heavy, thick with shadows that seemed to cling to the walls of the apartment. Sebastian had been gone for hours, drowning in work and responsibilities that felt endless, but beneath it all, something more corrosive simmered in his chest: Ash. Every time August’s phone buzzed, every time his eyes drifted with that absent look, Sebastian felt the ghost of Ash between them like a wedge prying them apart.It was well past midnight when Sebastian finally unlocked the door and stepped inside. The apartment was quiet, dimly lit only by the glow of a lamp in the living room. His body ached, his shirt clung to him with the scent of cigarettes and sweat from stress. All he wanted was to collapse into bed beside August, maybe hold him close, if August even wanted him there tonight.He pushed the door closed softly, careful not to wake him. But as he walked down the hall, he froze.From August’s room came the faint sound of a voice hushed, trembling, but unmistakably his. The tone w
Last Updated: 2025-08-17
Chapter: Chapter 63: Pretend it’s didn’t happen Morning came slowly, like the light itself was reluctant to enter the house. The rain had stopped sometime in the night, but the sky remained heavy and grey, the kind that made every sound echo sharper, more noticeable.August stirred in bed, the sheets cool against his skin. He reached out instinctively to the other side, but the space was empty. Cold. His chest tightened before he even opened his eyes.Sebastian hadn’t come to bed.He sat up, rubbing the back of his neck as fragments of last night replayed in his head the car ride, the silence, the argument that had unraveled them both. The words he had thrown, the look on Sebastian’s face when he said them. It all sat like a weight in his chest.Dragging himself out of bed, August padded barefoot down the hall. The house was quiet, too quiet. He found Sebastian in the kitchen, leaning against the counter, a cup of black coffee in his hand. He looked like he hadn’t slept, dark shadows beneath his eyes, his hair a little disheveled.
Last Updated: 2025-08-16
Chapter: Chapter 62The world outside blurred by in muted streaks of grey as the car sped down the nearly empty road. Rain tapped softly against the windshield, a steady rhythm that should’ve been calming, but instead felt like a ticking clock counting down to something neither of them wanted to face.August sat pressed against the passenger door, his arms folded tightly across his chest. His heartbeat hadn’t yet returned to normal after the chaos back at the café the fists, the shouting, Sebastian’s sudden appearance, and Ash’s glare burning through him.He swallowed, his voice quieter than he intended. “What were you doing there, Sebastian?Sebastian didn’t look away from the road. His jaw was locked, the sharp line of it tightening with every passing second. “I could ask you the same thing,he said, his tone clipped.“I told you,” August muttered, trying to keep the defensiveness from his voice. “I was just meeting a friend.Sebastian’s grip on the steering wheel flexed, leather creaking under his fin
Last Updated: 2025-08-12
Chapter: Chapter 61The message came mid morning, while August was halfway through his second cup of coffee and scrolling idly through his inbox.We should talk. Just you and me. No Sebastian.The name wasn’t saved, but August didn’t need it to be. He’d seen that precise, almost theatrical phrasing before. Ash.His first instinct was to ignore it he’d heard enough from Sebastian to know that Ash’s version of “talk” usually meant “dig under your skin.” But there was a second part to the text that made him pause.If you want to know what he’s keeping from you, meet me at Westbury Café at 3.August sat back, staring at the screen. It was bait. Obviously bait. But curiosity, that stubborn little itch, settled somewhere in his chest. He told himself he wouldn’t go. And yet by the time the clock pushed past two, he was already pulling on his jacket.The café was quiet for a weekday, just the occasional hiss of the espresso machine and the muted chatter of two people by the window. Ash sat in the far corner, dr
Last Updated: 2025-08-12
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