로그인공유
Chapter 22
최신 업데이트:
2026-01-16 05:00:13Liam's POV
The red dot was gone.
I had seen the shimmer on the glass—a refraction, a glitch in the light, or a targeted beam. My pulse didn't quicken. It calculated. I looked at the window, then at the security console embedded in the mahogany. No breach alerts. No perimeter alarms.
Isabella sat in the observer’s seat. She was as still as a statue in a museum. Cold. Unmoving. She had noticed the light too. I could tell by the way she didn't shift her weight. She was holding her breath, waiting for the structural collapse.
I didn't reach for her. I didn't acknowledge the threat.
"The climate control is optimal," I said.
My voice was a flat line. I needed the board to focus on the numbers, not the phantom on the glass. If they smelled a security risk on top of a market crash, the liquidation would begin before I could finish the sentence.
"Item two," I continued, tapping the glass of my tablet. "Shareholder stabilization. The Vane resignation has been leaked to the Bloomberg terminal. We are seeing a 2% recovery in the pre-market. It’s a start, but it’s not a foundation."
Sarah leaned forward. She was a barometer for the institutional investors. If she was sweating, the banks were already sharpening the knives.
"The recovery is based on the assumption that Isabella is a functional part of this board," Sarah said. She looked at Isabella, then back to me. "But we have no evidence of that. We have an observer who hasn't opened her folder."
"The observer is reviewing the metadata," Isabella said.
She didn't look up. Her eyes were on her own device.
I looked at the screen on the wall. The red ticker was still the dominant color. The pressure from the primary shareholders—Blackbridge, Gentry, the sovereign wealth funds—was a physical weight. They didn't care about the marriage. They cared about the 256-bit encryption that was currently holding their dividends hostage.
"The core integration is 12%," I said. "We are encountering... latency."
"Latency?" Sarah’s voice rose. "Or a lockout?"
"A sequence error," I lied.
I felt the weight of Isabella’s gaze. She knew I was lying. She knew I had spent the last three hours trying to hammer through her recursive gate.
I looked at the window again.
The city was a grid of risks. Somewhere out there, a lens was trained on this room. My mother had taught me that a target is only a target if it stays in the light.
"We need a public statement," I said. "A joint appearance. Liam and Isabella Sterling. The faces of the unified entity."
"I am not a Sterling," Isabella said.
The room went silent.
I felt a sharp, sudden heat in my—
I cut the thought. I focused on the table.
"Legally, you are," I said. "And for the sake of the market, the name is the only thing keeping the SEC from a full audit. We are playing a game of perception, Isabella. If you refuse the branding, you destroy the trust."
"I didn't refuse the branding. I refused the ownership."
"Isabella is right," I said, turning to the board. I made my voice loud. Authoritative. This was the public hedge. "Her identity as a Vane is a strategic asset. By maintaining her maiden name in certain filings, we retain the legacy contracts. It’s a hedge against the Vane Global creditors."
Sarah narrowed her eyes. "Is that the strategy, Liam? Or are you just unable to control your own wife?"
"Control is a low-yield metric," I said. "I prefer alignment."
I looked at Isabella.
"We are aligned. The core will be online by the end of the day."
"And if it isn't?" the woman in grey asked.
"Then I will resign as CEO," I said.
The gasp was collective. Felix, standing by the door, looked like I had just jumped off the roof.
It was a gamble. A high-risk, high-reward maneuver designed to buy me eight hours. Eight hours to find the frequency. Eight hours to find the person who was pointing a laser at my observer.
"Liam," Isabella whispered.
I didn't look at her.
"The meeting is adjourned," I said. "We reconvene at 6:00 PM for the final integration."
The board filed out. They were murmuring. They were calculating the odds of my resignation. They were already looking at my chair, wondering who would fill the vacuum.
Isabella didn't move.
I waited until the doors clicked shut.
I walked to the window. I touched the glass. It was cold. There were no marks. No burns.
"The laser wasn't a weapon," I said.
"It was a reminder," Isabella replied.
"Of what?"
"That the glass works both ways."
I turned. She was standing now. She looked small against the vastness of the boardroom.
"I backed you," I said.
"You hedged. You told them what they wanted to hear while you tried to hack my server. You haven't changed, Liam. You’re still looking for the backdoor."
"I'm trying to save the company."
"You're trying to save the math. There’s a difference."
I walked toward her. I stopped when I reached the edge of the mahogany. The distance was exactly four feet.
"The 'Heir Apparent' clause," I said. "I can fix it. I have the lawyers working on an addendum."
"You can't fix a lie with an addendum."
"It wasn't a lie. It was a condition of the trust."
"A condition you didn't share."
I wanted to—
I stopped. I looked at her hair. A strand had fallen over her eye. I wanted to reach out and—
Logic.
"If I had told you, you wouldn't have signed. And Arthur would have won."
"Maybe I wanted him to win. At least I know the rules with him."
"You don't mean that."
"Don't tell me what I mean, Liam. You don't have the clearance."
She picked up her tablet. She was leaving.
"Where are you going?" I asked.
"To fulfill my duties as an observer. I’m going to watch the sunset."
"Isabella. The light on the glass. It’s not safe for you to be alone."
"I’ve never been less alone in my life. I have ten board members, three federal agencies, and a husband watching me. I’m the most seen woman in New York."
She walked toward the door.
"Isabella."
She stopped.
"The frequency. Give it to me. Now. I can protect you if I have the core."
She turned. She looked at me for a long time. Her expression was unreadable. It was a blank screen.
"You already have the frequency, Liam," she said. "You just don't know how to listen to it."
She walked out.
5:45 PM
The sun was a dying ember over the Hudson.
I was in my office. The lights were off. I was staring at the recursive gate Isabella had built. It was beautiful. It wasn't just code; it was a poem of logic. It used the same patterns as the waves on the island.
The math of the sea.
I was close. I could feel the sequence beginning to yield.
My phone buzzed.
Sarah.
I answered.
"Liam. We have a problem. The shareholders are revolting. They’ve seen the pre-market. They think the 'observer status' is a sham."
"I told you. Six o'clock."
"Six o'clock is too late. Blackbridge is calling for an immediate audit of Isabella’s technical contributions. They don't believe she has the frequency. They think you’re holding a dead hand."
"She has it."
"Then prove it. Now."
The door to my office opened.
It wasn't Isabella.
It was the woman in grey. Miller. She was holding a physical folder.
"Mr. Sterling," she said.
"I'm busy, Miller."
"Not for this. We’ve just received a communication from a third party. A claimant to the Vane estate."
I felt the structural integrity of the room shift.
"What claimant?"
"A man named Julian. He’s filed a suit in Zurich. He’s claiming that Isabella Vane is not the legal beneficiary of the trust. He’s claiming that her mother, Eleanor, had a second child. A son."
I looked at the folder.
"That’s impossible. Eleanor’s records were sealed."
"Records can be unsealed, Mr. Sterling. And if Isabella isn't the beneficiary, the marriage is void. The trust is void. And the merger is illegal."
I looked at the clock.
5:55 PM.
The board was already gathering in the next room. I could hear the chairs moving. I could hear the low hum of their voices.
"Does Isabella know?" I asked.
"We haven't told her. We wanted to see your reaction first."
I looked at the folder. Then I looked at the door.
I saw Isabella. She was standing in the hallway, looking out at the city. She looked fragile. She looked like a glass wall.
"Liam?" Miller asked.
I didn't answer.
I was calculating the risk. If I told her, she would break. If I didn't tell her, and Julian was real, I was committing fraud.
Leverage.
"Keep the folder," I said. "We go to the meeting."
6:00 PM
The boardroom was a morgue.
Isabella sat in the observer’s seat. She had a glass of water in front of her. She looked at me as I walked in.
I sat at the head of the table.
"Integration," Sarah barked. "Now, Liam."
I looked at my tablet. The gate was still locked. I had failed.
"The sequence is processing," I said.
"Processing isn't proof," Sarah said. She stood up. She looked like a predator. "The shareholders want a demonstration. They want Isabella to unlock the first tier of the Medusa core. Right here. Right now."
I looked at Isabella.
She looked at me.
"Isabella?" I asked.
She didn't move.
"I don't have my terminal," she said.
"Use mine," Sarah said, sliding her own tablet across the mahogany. "Show us the frequency, Isabella. Show us that you’re not just a ghost in a wedding dress."
The room went silent.
I looked at the tablet. I looked at Isabella.
I saw the red dot.
It wasn't on the glass this time.
It was on Isabella’s forehead.
Cliffhanger:
I stood up. My chair scraped against the floor.
"Isabella, get down!" I yelled.
But she didn't move. She was looking at Sarah.
"The frequency isn't in the code," Isabella said. Her voice was calm. Too calm. "It’s in the room."
She picked up the tablet.
She didn't type.
She just held it up.
"Liam," she said. "Look at the window."
I turned.
I saw the red dot.
It wasn't a laser.
It was a countdown.
00:10
00:09
"Liam!" Sarah screamed. "What is that?"
I looked at the folder in Miller’s hand. I looked at Isabella.
I realized the trap wasn't the board.
The trap was the room.
00:05
"Sarah," I said. My voice was a whisper. "The audit. Who requested it?"
Sarah didn't answer.
She was looking at the window.
She was looking at the man standing on the ledge outside.
00:01
The glass didn't shatter.
It dissolved.
최신 챕터
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.
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