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CHAPTER NINETY-SEVEN
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2025-10-16 00:02:00CLARISSA.
The air in the boardroom felt suffocating, and the silence was so deafening, broken by the low hum of the air conditioning which did little to mask the tension that hung heavy in the air. Documents lay scattered across the desk — reports of financial discrepancies, project delays, audit reports — and from everything before me, it now seemed like the Montclair Group, once untouchable, was now bleeding from within.
I sat two seats away from my father, spine straight, pen in hand, pretending to take notes while my mind worked on two entirely different things: following the conversation, and tracing the invisible lines that connected every single recent disaster.
My father's voice broke through the noise in the boardroom. “We've lost over seventy million in the last quarter alone. Someone has to answer for that, definitely.”
Every gaze turned towards him as he spoke, the
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ISABELLA.My mind didn’t feel like my own anymore. It felt borrowed and rearranged, like someone had taken every thought I trusted and placed it back slightly out of alignment. The room around me pulsed with low light and muted sound, screens lining the walls in a curved semicircle that escaped feeling theoretical at best. Antonio never needed chains. He preferred architecture, space itself bent to his will.The images changed constantly: Clarissa stumbling through dust, coughing, eyes wild but focused; Devan moving with blood on his knuckles, his rage and instinct fused into something dangerous; Bruce dragging Freda through shadows, his jaw locked so tight it looked painful and my father half-conscious, guilt bleeding out of him slower than the wound in his shoulder.
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BRUCE.Every step through the alleyways and service corridors behind the city tightened something in my chest, a coil wound so hard it hummed beneath my skin. Anger wasn’t loud anymore; it had gone cold, the kind that sharpened vision and stripped everything else away. I catalogued exits without thinking. Reflections in glass. The way shadows bent around corners. Survival wasn’t a choice. It was muscle memory.Freda stayed with me. She didn’t ask where we were going, didn’t question why I kept changing routes or doubling back, didn’t comment on the way my jaw locked every time a siren wailed somewhere too close. She just matched my pace, her boots striking pavement in quiet sync with mine, her presence a constant weight at my flank. It wasn’t comforting. It was grounding, like an anchor that kept me from tipping fully into something reckless.The safehouse was an ugly concrete block tucked between two abandoned warehouses near
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BRUCE.The second my boots hit solid pavement and the roar of the collapsing building dimmed behind us, something in me cracked, like a fault line shifting under pressure. I didn’t wait for the others. I couldn’t. If I stayed another second in that cloud of dust and screams, I knew I would break, so I walked fast, head down, my hands stiff at my sides. Every step sent another small puff of grime falling off my clothes, as if the nightmare was refusing to let go of me.I heard the sound of footsteps following me, light but steady. It was Freda. She didn’t say anything, and she didn’t have to. She never pushed, never needled, never demanded words from me I didn’t have. She just stayed close enough to catch me if I fell, far enough not to make me feel cornered. Her silence fit mine: ugly and aching, but matching all the same.The night air hit my face cold, but inside me, everything felt scorched. My lungs still held the taste of smoke
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