LOGINShare
Chapter 7
Last Updated:
2025-12-25 13:27:47Isabella POV
The gas is a sweet, cloying fog. It smells like rotting lilies. I know this scent. It is a high-end incapacitant. My lungs burn. I pull my silk sleeve over my mouth.
Julian speaks through the vents. His voice sounds thin and manic.
"Give me the offshore codes. Or we all sleep here forever."
I look at Eleanor. My mother leans against the bedframe. Her fingers twitch around the pistol. She looks at me. I see her pride. She refuses to fall. She thinks she owns the air in this room.
"You will get nothing," she rasps at the ceiling.
I drop to the floor. The air is thinner near the marble. My heart beats against my ribs. I am afraid. I am a Vane. We hide fear behind math. I count the seconds between my breaths.
The door stays sealed.
A loud thud echoes from the balcony. The metal shutters groan. They rip outward. A shadow enters the room through the smoke.
Liam.
He wears a tactical respirator. He looks at me. He does not look at my mother. He moves with purpose. He is a predator in a burning house.
"Mask."
He presses the rubber to my face. I breathe. The oxygen is cold. It clears the fog in my brain. He pulls me up. His hand is a solid weight on my waist.
"We must go."
"Wait." I point to the suitcase on the floor. "The blueprints are in there. And my mother has the sapphire."
"Take the case." Liam kicks the leather bag toward me.
He pries the stone from Eleanor's limp fingers. He looks at her. He hates her. His pride wants to leave her here. He wants justice for his mother.
The wall pulses red.
"Thermal sensors," I whisper. "Julian is burning the house."
Liam POV
The mansion is a tomb. Fire climbs the walls. Julian is a coward. He chose fire because he lacks the courage to face me.
I carry Isabella. She grips the suitcase. She is stubborn. She is a Vane. She keeps her leverage even while she chokes.
I feel a pang of insecurity. Does she want me? Or does she want the man who can save her assets? I push the thought away.
"The back exit is blocked," Felix reports through the earbud.
"The wine cellar," Isabella directs. "There is a tunnel."
We run. The floor is hot through my boots. We reach the cellar. The air smells of oak. Isabella pulls a specific bottle of Bordeaux. The wall swivels.
"Isabella." I stop her.
I pull her mask off for a second. I look at her eyes.
"If we leave, you are dead to the world. No more empire. No more Vane."
I want her to choose me over the money.
"I am a ghost."
I kiss her. She tastes like smoke.
We enter the tunnel. It is damp. The ceiling rumbles. The house is collapsing above us. We reach the boathouse. The night air is cold.
Julian stands on the dock.
He holds a flare gun. His clothes are scorched. He looks small. He looks broken.
"Julian. Put it down."
"The suitcase!" Julian screams. "Throw it in the water!"
I step in front of Isabella. My hand goes to my belt. I do not have a weapon. I have only my body.
Isabella steps around me.
"The suitcase is empty."
She opens the latches. Old ledgers fall out.
"I switched them while the gas filled the room," she explains. "The blueprints are ash."
Julian stares at the paper. His face goes blank. He is a man who lost his only map.
I lunge.
Julian steps back. He trips on the slick wood. The flare gun fires.
The orange light hits the fuel tank of a jet ski.
The explosion throws us back. Julian vanishes into the dark water. He does not resurface.
"Liam. The boat!" Isabella pulls my arm.
We jump onto the deck. I start the engines. We roar away. The Vane estate is a pillar of fire behind us.
Isabella POV
The sky is orange. I sit in the passenger seat. I look at the fire.
Everything I knew is gone. My bed. My books. My name.
I feel a sense of shame. I let Liam see me like this. I am a girl in a scorched white dress.
I reach into my pocket. I pull out a crumpled piece of paper.
"What is that?" Liam asks.
"The real codes. I memorized them."
I look at the ink. I look at the water.
I drop the paper. It disappears in the wake of the boat.
"Everything is gone."
Liam takes my hand. His skin is rough.
"Not everything."
We drive for hours after reaching the shore. We reach a cabin in the woods. It is quiet. Liam starts a fire. He gives me a blanket and a glass of wine.
"Why did you do it?" I ask.
Liam kneels. He looks at my hands.
"Because you were brave enough to throw it all away."
I feel a spark of hope. I move closer. I want to believe him.
A knock echoes on the door.
Three sharp strikes.
Liam reaches for his gun. He looks through the small window. His face goes pale. He loses his breath.
"Liam. Who is it?"
He opens the door.
A girl stands on the porch. She is wet from the rain. She shivers.
She wears a red dress.
She looks exactly like me. She has my eyes. She has my height.
"Isabella."
Her voice is my voice.
"Mother told me you were dead. She told me I was the only one left."
I look at her hands. She holds a tablet.
The screen shows a map. A blue dot pulses at our exact coordinates.
"There are two of us," she states.
She smiles. It is a sharp smile. It is the smile of a predator.
I see the screen change.
"The Medusa core is active."
She points the tablet at Liam.
"Kill him. Or I delete the world."
Latest chapter
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.
You may also like
I Want You Back
Meminger528.4K viewsMr. Ford Is Jealous
Boat of Peaches769.5K viewsMeet My Brothers
Red Thirteen5.0M viewsPunished by His Love
Suzie4.4M viewsShared by Brothers, Claimed Forever
Amie 🦋151 viewsMy Billionaire Lover
MyDream 112 viewsRisky Desires: Dark Erotic Short Stories.
Estrella Writesss236 viewsEx-Wife Became Beautiful After Divorce : He Regrets
Miss Queen Mikayla601 views
