Compartir

Chapter 20

Autor: TEG
last update Última actualización: 2026-01-12 11:45:52

​Isabella's POV

​The rain had returned. It wasn't the heavy, dramatic storm of the island. It was a fine mist that turned the city into a smudge of grey and charcoal.

​I sat in the back of a taxi. Not a black car. Not a Sterling-encrypted SUV. A yellow cab that smelled of old coffee and artificial pine. The driver didn't know my name. He didn't know I had ten billion dollars moving through the wires because of a signature I had penned three hours ago.

​I looked at my phone.

​The ticker was bleeding red.

​Sterling Tech. -4.2%

​The dark pools were reacting to the lockout. The market hates a vacuum. If the core isn't visible, it doesn't exist. If it doesn't exist, the merger is a corpse.

​I leaned my head against the cold glass of the window.

​Liam would be frantic. He would be calculating the friction. He would be looking for the structural weakness in my encryption. He wouldn't be looking for me. Not the person. He’d be looking for the key.

​I tapped the screen.

​The location was a diner in Hell’s Kitchen. It was open twenty-four hours. The lights were too bright. The coffee was burnt. It was the kind of place where people went to be alone together.

​I stepped out of the cab.

​The mist dampened my hair. I didn't care. I walked inside.

​He was already there.

​He was sitting in a corner booth, far from the windows. He looked out of place in his charcoal suit. He looked like an intruder from a higher world.

​I sat down across from him.

​I didn't say hello. I didn't offer a hand.

​Liam looked at me. His eyes were bloodshot. The bandage on his shoulder—the one he thought I hadn't noticed earlier—seemed to pull at his posture.

​"The board is in emergency session," he said. His voice was a low rasp.

​"I know."

​"Felix can’t crack the frequency, Isabella. He says you’ve looped it through a recursive gate."

​"I have."

​"If we don't present the sync to the SEC by market open, they’ll suspend trading. The liquidators will be in the building by noon."

​I looked at the laminate table. There was a scratch near the sugar shaker. It looked like a jagged mountain range.

​"The 'Heir Apparent' clause," I said.

​Liam didn't flinch. He didn't blink. He just watched me. "It was a protective measure. Arthur—"

​"Don't talk about Arthur."

​"Isabella, the legal framework of the trust was designed to prevent a hostile—"

​"I’m not a framework."

​I looked up. I met his gaze.

​He looked tired. But behind the exhaustion, the strategist was still working. I could see him measuring the distance between us. He was looking for the variable to flip.

​"You lied," I said.

​"I withheld information to ensure the success of the merger."

​"You lied to me."

​"It was a tactical necessity."

​I felt a cold, sharp stone settle in my stomach.

​I had wanted him to be different. In the pharmacy, when he said he was coming for me, I had allowed myself to believe in a shared frequency. I had thought the lighthouse had burned away the corporate masks.

​I was wrong.

​"Why the diner, Isabella? You could have sent a lawyer. You could have stayed in the dark."

​"I wanted to see you."

​"To negotiate?"

​"To ask."

​Liam leaned back. The red light from the 'EAT' sign outside flickered across his face. It made him look like he was bleeding.

​"The stock is at minus five percent," he said. "Every minute we sit here, we lose a hundred million dollars."

​"I don't care about the money, Liam."

​"The board cares. The DOJ cares."

​"I am the board now. I have the trust."

​He leaned forward. His hands were flat on the table. They were steady. Too steady.

​"Then end this. Give me the key. We’ll go back to the tower. We’ll fix the filing. I’ll have the lawyers draft a post-nuptial amendment to the clause. We can neutralize the 'Heir Apparent' status within the week."

​"You’re still doing it," I said.

​"Doing what?"

​"Managing me."

​I reached into my pocket. I pulled out a small, silver thumb drive. The frequency was on it. The key to the Sterling empire.

​I set it on the table.

​Liam’s eyes moved to it. Just for a second. The hunger was there. The drive for order. The need to fix the broken machine.

​He didn't reach for it. He was too smart for that.

​"What do you want, Isabella?"

​"The truth."

​"I told you. The clause was—"

​"No."

​I leaned in. The smell of the burnt coffee was overwhelming.

​"When we were on the island. When the fire started. Why did you stay?"

​Liam shifted. "The core was in the basement. I couldn't let it burn."

​"You stayed after the core was out. You stayed for me."

​"I needed the beneficiary to be alive for the merger to remain valid."

​I felt my breath hitch. I forced it down.

​"In the pharmacy. You said you couldn't let the asset be compromised."

​"Correct."

​"And the wedding. Tonight. Was that an asset protection move too?"

​Liam looked at the silver drive. Then he looked at me.

​"It was the most logical path forward," he said.

​He didn't use any emotional labels. He didn't say 'love.' He didn't even say 'care.' He used the language of the towers. He used the words that didn't hurt.

​I felt a sudden, sharp ache in my chest. It was physical.

​I was a component. I was a Vane. I was a shareholder.

​I was never Isabella.

​"Look at me, Liam."

​He did.

​"Are you using me?"

​The question hung in the air. It was a bridge. It was a cliff.

​The waitress walked by. She set two glasses of water on the table. The ice clinked. The sound was deafening.

​Liam didn't answer.

​He looked at my face. He looked at the scar on my wrist.

​I saw his throat move as he swallowed. I saw a flicker of something in his eyes. A crack. A structural failure.

​"Isabella," he whispered.

​"A simple question, Liam. Yes or no."

​"It's not that simple. The variables—"

​"Yes or no."

​He closed his eyes.

​I watched him. I saw the way his shoulders stayed tense. I saw the way he wouldn't let himself lean into the silence.

​He was calculating. Even now. He was weighing the cost of the truth against the cost of the lie. He was looking for the path that saved the company.

​I picked up the thumb drive.

​I held it over the glass of water.

​"Isabella, don't," he said. His voice was sharp now. Fear. But was it fear for me? Or fear for the code?

​"Answer the question."

​"I am trying to save everything we’ve built."

​"Are you using me?"

​He looked at the drive. He looked at the water.

​The silence stretched. It wasn't the silence of the boardrooms. It wasn't the silence of the penthouse.

​It was the silence of a house that had already burned down.

​Liam opened his mouth.

​Cliffhanger:

​He reached across the table. His hand hovered over mine. He didn't touch me. He just stayed there, a hair’s breadth away.

​"I can't lose the core," he said.

​His voice was dead.

​I looked at his hand.

​"That's not an answer," I whispered.

​I let the thumb drive go.

​It hit the water with a soft splash.

​The silver metal sank to the bottom. The liquid clouded. The electronics hissed once, a tiny death rattle, and then went still.

​Liam stared at the glass.

​He didn't move. He didn't reach in to save it.

​He just sat there, watching the ten billion dollars dissolve in a glass of tap water.

​I stood up.

​"I think you just did," I said.

​I walked out of the diner.

​I didn't look back.

​I stepped into the rain.

​My phone buzzed.

​Market Open: Sterling Tech. -12%

​I didn't stop.

​I walked until the lights of the diner were just a red smudge in the mist.

Continúa leyendo este libro gratis
Escanea el código para descargar la App

Último capítulo

  • The CEO's Undercover Heiress    Epilogue

    POV: IsabellaThe Oregon coast has a way of stripping a person down to their essentials. There is no marble here to reflect a curated image, no velvet to soften the edges of a hard day. There is only the salt, the cedar, and the relentless rhythm of the tide.I sat at the small, scarred wooden desk in the corner of our bedroom, watching the rain streak the glass. It was a different kind of rain than the ones in Manhattan—it didn’t feel like an omen of a corporate takeover. It just felt like a Tuesday.Before me lay a simple, leather-bound journal. It wasn't a tablet. It didn't have a login, a biometric scanner, or an encryption layer. It was just paper and ink. I picked up the pen and felt the weight of it in my hand.August 14th, I wrote. I forgot where I put my keys today. It took me twenty minutes to find them under a pile of mail. It was the most frustrating, wonderful feeling I’ve had all week.A year ago, forgetting was impossible. My mind had been a search engine, a perfect, cl

  • The CEO's Undercover Heiress    Chapter 80

    POV: IsabellaThe Virginia air was thick, heavy with the scent of damp earth and pine—a suffocating blanket compared to the sharp, clean ice of Iceland. We weren't flying private. We weren't even flying as the Rossis. We had crossed the border in the back of a refrigerated truck, buried under crates of produce, two ghosts returning to a haunt we had never actually lived in.Liam stood beside me in the tall grass of the valley, his eyes fixed on the structure ahead. It wasn't a tower. It wasn't a glass fortress. It was an old, converted farmhouse, surrounded by a high electric fence and a sea of black-eyed Susans. To a passerby, it looked like a rural retreat. To me, it felt like the source of a wound."This is where it started," I said. My voice was low, steady. "The 2014 trials. Before the Sterling money made it shiny.""Marcus was right," Liam said. He was holding a handheld thermal scanner Arthur had given us. The screen showed a massive heat signature deep beneath the floorboards

  • The CEO's Undercover Heiress    Chapter 79

    POV: LiamThe facility didn't just feel empty; it felt hollowed out. The silence left behind by the Julian Vane AI was a heavy, physical thing, a void where a god had once lived. Arthur Vance was already moving, his fingers dancing across a handheld terminal as he scrambled the local perimeter sensors."The Pension Board's contractors are landing at the geothermal plant four miles East," Arthur said, his voice clipped. "They aren't here for a deposition. They’ve been authorized to use 'extraordinary measures' to recover the Sterling lifeboat fund. To them, you aren't people—you’re the human passwords to three billion dollars."I looked at Isabella. She was standing by the window, her silhouette sharp against the moonlight. She looked different. The slight, constant tension in her shoulders had vanished. She was breathing with her whole body, her chest rising and falling in a slow, deep rhythm that made my own heart ache with a strange, fierce relief."The routing codes," she said, tur

  • The CEO's Undercover Heiress    Chapter 78

    POV: IsabellaThe port of Reykjavik didn't look like a sanctuary. It looked like the end of the world. Sharp, volcanic rock met a sea the color of bruised slate, and the air carried a chill that didn't just bite—it felt like it was trying to hollow you out from the inside.Liam held my hand as we stepped off the freighter's gangway. The dock was empty, save for a single, silver car idling near a stack of rusted shipping containers. There were no customs officials. No police. Just the low, haunting moan of the wind through the harbor cables."The manifest said they were expecting us," Liam said, his voice tight. He hadn't let go of the tablet. "But 'Reykjavik Control' isn't a person. It’s an automated relay.""My father’s voice, Liam," I whispered. "I know it. I lived with it in my head for years. That wasn't a recording. The inflection... it responded to the ship’s call sign.""We’ll find out," he said.We walked toward the car. The door opened automatically. There was no driver. The

  • The CEO's Undercover Heiress    Chapter 77

    POV: LiamThe Atlantic didn’t care about corporate hierarchies. It didn't care about the fall of the Sterling name or the death of a digital goddess. Out here, three hundred miles from the nearest coastline, the world was a vast, churning slate of charcoal grey and white foam.I stood on the narrow deck of the Seraphina, a mid-sized freighter that smelled of diesel and salt. The wind was a physical force, a cold hand pressing against my chest, threatening to push me back into the steel railing. I looked down at my hands. The bandages were gone, replaced by thin, pink scars that stung in the salt spray. They were the only physical proof I had left of the night at the medical wing."You should be inside," a voice said over the roar of the engines.I turned to see Isabella—Sarah—standing in the doorway of the bridge. She was wearing a heavy, oversized wool sweater Marcus had found in a thrift shop in Brooklyn. Her hair was pulled back, her face pale but clear. The waxy, translucent look

  • The CEO's Undercover Heiress    Chapter 76

    POV: IsabellaThe world was no longer made of data. It was made of cold air, the sharp scent of ozone, and the terrifying, heavy weight of my own limbs. The "Hum"—that constant, electric companion that had lived in the marrow of my bones for years—was gone. In its place was a silence so absolute it felt like a physical pressure against my eardrums.But the silence was a lie."The Share, Liam," my mother’s voice cut through the dark, sharp as a glass shard. "The gold foil. Place it on the table and step back, or I’ll find out exactly how much a human heart can take before it simply quits."I blinked, my vision slowly adjusting to the beam of the flashlight. The barrel of the gun was a dark, hollow eye inches from my face. My mother stood behind it, her lab coat stark and white, her face as motionless as the steel cabinets surrounding us. She wasn't a doctor anymore. She wasn't a CEO. She was a woman who had lost her godhood and was trying to buy it back with a bullet.Liam didn't move.

Más capítulos
Explora y lee buenas novelas gratis
Acceso gratuito a una gran cantidad de buenas novelas en la app GoodNovel. Descarga los libros que te gusten y léelos donde y cuando quieras.
Lee libros gratis en la app
ESCANEA EL CÓDIGO PARA LEER EN LA APP
DMCA.com Protection Status