Pustaka
Cari
Beranda / Romance / Tangled In Velvet / Chapter 76 – A Visit from the Past

Share

Chapter 76 – A Visit from the Past

Penulis: Becca Williams
last update Terakhir Diperbarui: 2025-07-30 06:23:41

The sound of hammers had become almost comforting.

Velvet’s west wing had been stripped of decadence and shame. Gone were the masked portraits, the glass floors with mirrored sins. In their place: natural light, soft carpets, rooms that didn’t hide anything. Isolde stood in what was once the Crimson Room. Now it bore pale gray walls and the scent of eucalyptus is subtle, clean, breathable. It almost felt human.

Almost.

A soft alert beeped from the security panel beside the elevator.

Isolde turned. “Dorian?” she called toward the hallway. “Did you add someone to the roster today?”

“No,” came his voice, muffled through the corridor. A few seconds later, he emerged from the adjacent suite, sleeves rolled, clipboard in one hand. “Everything’s locked to white-list only. No one gets in unless we verify.”

The panel blinked again. One word flashed in red across the touchscreen: EXTERNAL ENTRY – CODE OVERRIDE.

Dorian stepped in front of her, his hand flat on the panel. “I don’t like this.” His
Lanjutkan membaca buku ini secara gratis
Pindai kode untuk mengunduh Aplikasi
Bab Terkunci
Bab sebelumnya Bab selanjutnya

Bab terbaru

  • Tangled In Velvet    Chapter 101 – Scorched Silk

    The world didn’t end with a bang.It ended with a list.A spreadsheet dropped at 3:07 a.m. Eastern Standard Time to over fifty global journalists, four advocacy networks, and two hacktivist cells. No preamble. No watermark. Just three words in the subject line:WE REMEMBER EVERYTHING.Within hours, the Red List went viral.Names. Codes. Transactions. Video stills.Politicians. Producers. Oil barons. Royal liaisons.And buried deep in a folder labeled Unprocessed Clients a series of reference files from Velvet’s private server, each stamped with the club’s sigil: a velvet poker chip bleeding down the center.But Dorian Blackthorn didn’t see any of it live.He saw the aftermath.From a high, wood-paneled cabin tucked into a cliffside thirty miles north of Manhattan, he stood at the window with one hand braced against the cold glass, eyes narrowed at the flat-screen news feed in the corner.Behind him, Isolde was curled on the leather couch, barefoot, hair damp, wearing one of his old bl

  • Tangled In Velvet    Chapter 100 – The Real Face

    The fire made page five.Not page one.Not breaking news.Just a clipped headline in the lower fold of a Wednesday edition, printed in stiff black ink:“Minor Containment Breach in Federal Evidence Facility, Lower Manhattan.”No injuries.No suspects.No comment.The rest was all deflection “chemical storage misfiled,” “insufficient sprinkler pressure,” “minor loss of archived judicial material.”But the facility’s interior blueprints were never released. And no security tapes ever surfaced.Because there were no backups.Because everything burned.Isolde sat on the windowsill of Penelope’s temporary apartment high above the skyline, watching gray tendrils of smoke still curl faintly on the horizon. She wore an old sweater of Dorian’s. No makeup. Hair tied back. Her laptop glowed on the table behind her, untouched.“I thought I’d feel more,” she said quietly.Dorian was pouring coffee behind her. “You feel more than anyone I’ve ever known. You just don’t waste it on what’s already dea

  • Tangled In Velvet    Chapter 99 – The Mirror Room

    The elevator ride down felt like descending into a crypt.It was a freight lift with no buttons, only a key override. Penelope stood beside Isolde, a burner tablet clutched under one arm. Dorian was already tense, his body positioned between her and the lift doors, eyes tracking every flicker of light above them.“Brooklyn?” he asked, low.Penelope nodded. “Technically Red Hook. No signage. No public record after 2013. But this place processed Velvet’s biometric log-ins for five years before it ‘burned’ everything.”“You think that message came from here?” Isolde asked.Penelope gave her a sharp look. “I don’t think so. I know.”The lift hit bottom with a mechanical sigh.The doors opened.And cold air hit them like a slap.The facility was dark except for emergency strips that glowed along the floor. Concrete walls. Rows of thick server columns stretched out ahead of them, humming faintly not loud enough to suggest full processing, but definitely not powered down.Dorian stepped forw

  • Tangled In Velvet    Chapter 98 – The Name She Didn’t Write Down

    It was nearly 2 a.m.The city glowed below them in fractured reflections neon bleeding across wet glass. Penelope was passed out on the couch, laptop still open. The Velvet Unmasked stream had gone viral. Six news outlets. Three subpoenas. One foundation froze.But Isolde couldn’t sleep.She stood barefoot at Dorian’s office window, arms wrapped around herself. A soft breeze drifted from the open pane, carrying the scent of distant rain and burnt electricity.Behind her, Dorian worked at a second terminal, the secured drive from the Archive deep-searching background logs Vivienne couldn’t access herself.A flicker.A line of data unspooled.Then it stopped.He froze.“Isolde,” he said quietly. “Come here.”She padded over.On screen: a series of user IDs. Most were anonymous. But one caught her attention not because of the name. Because of the alias.Archivist.A0The very first.She swallowed. “Vivienne never mentioned that version.”“No,” Dorian murmured. “Because it predates her.”H

  • Tangled In Velvet    Chapter 97 – Vivienne’s Will

    It arrived wrapped in ivory ribbon.No address. No stamp. No return name.Just Isolde’s full birth name, written in script so familiar it made her stomach twist.Isolde Wrenleigh-Grey.She stood in the hallway of Dorian’s penthouse, the city a silent backdrop through glass as she turned the envelope over once, then again.“It was hand-delivered,” Penelope had said earlier. “Left at the doorman’s desk at midnight, exactly. No security footage. No prints.”Now, Isolde held it like a shard of something sacred.She hadn’t cried since the trial.But she felt the warning ache behind her eyes now.She slid her thumb under the seal and unfolded the paper inside.Dearest Isolde,If you’re reading this, it means I’m either finally free… or someone else wrote the ending for me.I hope it was me.But I know you, sister. You would never stop with just the truth. You would never let me vanish into a final scene. You always hated the idea of a closed curtain.So I’m giving you one more act.Isolde’s

  • Tangled In Velvet    Chapter 96 – The Woman Without a Face

    The world knew her name now.ISOLDE WRENLEIGH, scrolled across news tickers.Velvet Whistleblower. Ghostlight Leaker. Final Witness.She stood in the center of her East Village flat, the dim morning light warming the cracked paint on the walls, a silence too strange to belong to freedom. Her phone vibrated on the counter again and again with press requests, offers, threats.She ignored them.A kettle whistled. She didn’t move.Across from her, Dorian sat on the edge of the window bench, shirt sleeves rolled, eyes on her face like she might vanish.“They think you planned this,” he said quietly. “All of it.”She laughed. Just once. “They think I’m powerful enough to orchestrate an empire’s collapse from a laptop and a stage mic?”“They think you’re dangerous.”“They’re not wrong.”She sipped tea and exhaled.Penelope had gone dark again safely, this time tracing residual server lines that might lead to the final identity of the Archivist. The Court was in shambles. Kyle Vern had resign

Bab Lainnya

Anda juga akan menyukai

Jelajahi dan baca novel bagus secara gratis
Akses gratis ke berbagai novel bagus di aplikasi GoodNovel. Unduh buku yang kamu suka dan baca di mana saja & kapan saja.
Baca buku gratis di Aplikasi
Pindai kode untuk membaca di Aplikasi
DMCA.com Protection Status