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Chapter 27
Huling Na-update:
2025-05-17 18:15:11Chapter 27: The Ghost File
The city had changed. Or maybe it was Isla who had.
The skyline still clawed at the sky with its glass spires and endless ambition, but the air felt different now—thicker, more watchful. Like the streets remembered her, and were waiting.
Christopher drove silently, eyes flicking from the rearview mirror to the road. The tension in the car was a third passenger. The wounded man Vi had captured was sedated in the trunk—zip-tied and gagged, not for cruelty, but survival.
Isla pressed her forehead against the cool glass of the window, watching her reflection blur in the passing city lights. Her old self would’ve wept at the thought of returning. But now?
She was too angry to cry.
“Do you know what you’re looking for?” Christopher asked, voice quiet but firm.
“No,” she answered. “But I’ll know when I find it.”
---
The Building
Her father’s former office stood like a monolith on the edge of the business district—tall, regal, and hollow now. It had been closed down two years ago, quietly. The world said bankruptcy. Isla knew better.
There had been secrets behind those tinted windows. Conversations that never touched paper. Agreements sealed with blood, not signatures.
Christopher picked the side lock like muscle memory. Isla followed him in.
The elevator was dead. They took the stairs—twelve flights up. Each step sounded like a countdown.
Finally, they reached the top floor. Her father’s name still faintly visible on the frosted glass: Julian Roth, Executive Director.
She hesitated.
Christopher touched her arm. “You don’t have to do this alone.”
“I know,” she whispered. “But I want to.”
She opened the door.
---
The Office
It was a time capsule.
Dust coated everything—desks, chairs, picture frames. Her father’s jacket still hung on the coatrack, limp like a ghostly figure left behind. The air smelled of old paper and a memory she couldn’t place.
She walked to the main desk. Opened drawers. Files. Ledgers. Most of it was surface-level. Sanitized.
Christopher moved to the bookshelves, scanning for false backs, hidden compartments.
Isla turned to the portrait of her father on the wall. He looked regal. Commanding. Even now, she couldn’t tell if she missed him… or hated him.
She touched the frame—and heard a faint click.
The painting swung forward.
Behind it, a safe.
Christopher’s brows lifted slightly. “He was cliché.”
“No,” Isla said, reaching for the dial. “He was careful.”
She remembered the numbers—not his birthday. Hers. The day her mother died. And the address of their old house.
Click. The safe opened.
Inside: a leather-bound journal, a flash drive, and an old phone.
She stared at them.
Christopher stepped closer. “That’s it?”
She picked up the journal. “No. This is the beginning.”
---
The Journal
They sat on the floor, side by side, the journal spread between them.
Her father’s handwriting was sharp and deliberate. Each word felt like a whisper from the grave.
“Victor was never the problem. He was the product. The disease lies deeper—old bloodlines, foreign accounts, a network rooted in generational sin. I built this empire not to rule it, but to destroy it. Piece by piece. And now I fear… it will consume me before I can finish.”
Isla’s throat tightened.
“Your father was trying to bring it down,” Christopher said softly. “That’s why he died.”
She nodded, numb. “But he became the thing he hated trying to stop it.”
“Do you blame him?”
She didn’t answer.
Instead, she flipped to the back—there, in trembling script, a single line:
“If I don’t make it… Isla, forgive me. And finish what I couldn’t.”
Tears welled in her eyes. Not from sadness.
From rage.
He had lied. Protected her with silence. Just like Christopher.
“I can’t trust any of you,” she whispered.
Christopher looked at her, wounded but composed. “I never asked you to trust me. Only to survive.”
---
Later That Night
They stayed in a safe apartment above the old law firm—an unused space with thick blinds and reinforced locks. Vi stayed behind to interrogate the prisoner. She was better at extracting information anyway.
Isla showered for almost an hour, letting the water scald away the dirt, the blood, the confusion. But it couldn’t reach what hurt deepest.
When she stepped out, she found Christopher standing by the window, shirtless, scars exposed beneath moonlight.
She approached him, slowly.
“Did you love her?” she asked.
He didn’t flinch. “Who?”
“My stepmother. Naomi.”
There was a long pause.
“I tried to,” he said. “Before I met you.”
Her voice was a whisper. “And now?”
He turned to her, eyes shadowed with something dangerous.
“Now I wish I’d never touched her. Because nothing compares to what I feel when you look at me like that.”
She didn’t speak. Just moved toward him, slowly, cautiously.
He caught her before she collapsed into him—arms strong, jaw clenched.
They stood there, pressed together like broken parts trying to make something whole.
---
The Flash Drive
It wasn’t just names.
It was everything.
Bank accounts. Wire transfers. Passwords. A spiderweb connecting politicians, assassins, CEOs, judges. And at the center of it all:
Victor Kane.
Christopher leaned over the screen, jaw locked.
“They’re laundering through orphanages, nonprofits, even universities,” he muttered.
“And my father was trying to unravel it all,” Isla said. “But he died before he could.”
“No. He left you the map.”
She looked up at him. “Then why does it still feel like we’re losing?”
He didn’t answer.
Because he didn’t know either.
---
Pinakabagong kabanata
In love with my step father in law Chapter 51
---Chapter 51: The protocol The air filtration system kicked in overhead, allowing the silence that fell after Victor's collapse. His breathing grew shallow, the paralytic substance which was given to him has already taking effect—slowing him down but not making him go silent.Ethan movesmaking sure locking Victor’s wrists into the cuffs. Christopher quicken his pace towards the his weapon, still on command, until Isla raised a hand. “It’s clear.”Christopher lowered his gun, his eyes locking with Isla’s. “You alright?”She didn’t answer immediately. Her pulse was still racing, her body alive with adrenaline and fury. “Definitly alright,” she muttered, turning her attention back to Victor. His head turned slightly to one side, eyes flickering.“No much time Isla said, her voice steadier than she felt. “The serum’s window is short. We need to start the extraction.”Ethan pulled out a small case and cracked it open. Inside, an interface rig—neural extraction pads, fiber-linked monit
In love with my step father in law Chapter 46
Chapter 46 —Beneath the boardThe night did not bring peace. Not to Isla. Not to the house that still held too many echoes of her mother’s silence. The rain had softened into a hush by midnight, but inside the walls, the weight of memory still pressed down like an invisible fog.She had tried to sleep. Curled under the same floral quilt that had once brought her comfort as a child, she had closed her eyes and listened for calm—but her thoughts refused to quiet.Elena’s face haunted her. Not as she’d last seen it, sick and pale, but younger—laughter in her eyes, rebellion in her smile. Victor’s words had painted the woman she used to be with strokes so vivid, Isla felt like she’d never really known her mother at all.At 3:14 a.m., Isla rose. She lit the lamp by the window and padded barefoot across the old wooden floor. The room had changed little since she left for college. Faded posters, a stuffed bear on the bookshelf, her name still etched in the corner of the dresser drawer.She p
In love with my step father in law Chapter 45
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In love with my step father in law Chapter 44
Chapter 44 — The Letter She Shouldn't Have FoundThe storm outside hadn’t relented, and neither had the one in Isla’s chest. Thunder cracked the sky like it was splitting open secrets of its own. In her mother’s old bedroom—the one no one had touched since her passing—Isla stood barefoot, holding the yellowed letter that had just undone everything she thought she knew.She hadn’t come in here looking for truth. She came because sleep wouldn’t hold her, because her mother’s perfume still clung faintly to the wardrobe door, and because something had pulled her there. Fate, maybe. Or ghosts.The envelope had no name. Just a date from over two decades ago—before Isla was born. But the handwriting, the looping, graceful strokes, were unmistakably her mother’s.She read it again.> My dearest Victor,I still hear your voice when the world goes quiet. I still taste your kiss when I close my eyes. I should hate you, I should wish you gone, but I can’t. You live in me.I fear what this secret
In love with my step father in law Chapter 43
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In love with my step father in law Chapter 42
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In love with my step father in law Chapter 41
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In love with my step father in law Chapter 50
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In love with my step father in law Chapter 49(2)
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