Library
Search
Home / Romance / The CEO’s Vengeful Bride / Chapter 171 – “The Hollow Queen”

Share

Chapter 171 – “The Hollow Queen”

Author: Ernest Brooks
last update Last Updated: 2025-05-21 01:16:57

Elena’s POV

The first thing I registered was silence.

Not the kind of silence that followed explosions or the eerie stillness before chaos but the kind that felt cultivated. Like a museum that hadn’t been touched in years. My lashes fluttered open, but the room blurred at the edges, light pouring in from floor-to-ceiling windows like morning syrup.

My mouth was dry. My head throbbed. But what unsettled me the most… was the calm.

I sat up slowly in a bed too soft, too large, wrapped in linen that smelled of sandalwood and something faintly familiar – cologne. There was a glass of water on the nightstand. A tray with fruit I couldn’t name. A vase of blue lilies. And a single book, untouched, its spine cracked from too many rereads.

Something inside me screamed that I *should* know all of this.

I didn’t.

The reflection in the mirror across the room startled me. The woman staring back looked composed. Skin pale, lips cracked, hair loosely braided. A long scar ran from her clavicle to her
Ernest Brooks

Elena may have lost her memories, but not the fire that made her a queen. This chapter marks the beginning of a dangerous rediscovery—where love, lies, and legacy will collide. What would you do if the only truth you could trust… was one you left behind for yourself? What do you think will happen next? Drop your theories below! Please Subscribe, Like, Share and Comment

| Like
Continue to read this book for free
Scan code to download App
Locked Chapter
Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Latest chapter

  • The CEO’s Vengeful Bride   Chapter 190 – “Death of a Queen”

    Time has no shape here.No pulse. No light.No breath.I’m floating in the dark, between consciousness and nothingness. My body is sealed in cryo-stasis, cooled to the edge of death. My brainwaves, nearly flat-lined, ride the artificial mimicry of oblivion. The world believes I’m gone.And maybe… part of me is.But something deeper remains.The plan.Even without senses, without sound or movement, I *feel* the world shifting. Like phantom limbs remembering the pain. My instincts claw toward the surface, desperate to reconnect.But I stay silent. Dead. Invisible.Because this is how we win.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Outside, in the real world, they’re already mourning me.The broadcast was surgical - Victor’s masterpiece of digital theater.Across global networks, a deep-fake assassination played in cinematic perfection: Elena Cassadine—me—cornered in a rebel stronghold, her twin standing above her, issuing

  • The CEO’s Vengeful Bride   Chapter 189 – “The Lazarus Plan“

    The silence in the underground command center wasn’t peace – it was tension coiled so tightly it hummed in the air. I stood in front of the holo-table as Victor’s simulation flickered to life, a rotating model of the Eidolon Core gleaming in the center like a beating artificial heart.Above it, an overlay of my own neural blueprint hovered like a ghost.My ghost.Damien stood beside me, arms folded, eyes locked on the projection. He hadn’t spoken in five minutes. He didn’t need to. The plan was already killing him.Victor tapped a key. “Phase One: Burn Eidolon to the ground. We overload its satellite-linked storage clusters with recursive logic traps, forcing the AI to collapse under the weight of its own predictive algorithms. That gives us a ten-minute blackout window.”He paused, glancing at me.I nodded. “And Phase Two?”Victor swallowed. “We erase *you*.”No one moved.He continued, “We run the biotech stasis protocol. Induce full-body catatonia, and shut down all brain activity.

  • The CEO’s Vengeful Bride   Chapter 188 – “Exile”

    The desert didn’t remember her name.Beneath a scorched sky and the low hum of radiation towers, Elena Montrose walked where satellites wouldn’t follow and memories dared not tread. A no-man’s-land outside the Eden Grid. No surveillance. No signal. No ghosts.Just silence.She had found the perfect place to disappear.The bunker was ancient. Rusted metal. Forgotten tech. A fallout shelter from a war no one remembered – but one that felt oddly familiar now. She slept on a cot, if at all. Ate nutrient packs. Watched the wind carry sand like it was erasing history grain by grain.It was peaceful.And that peace tore her apart.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------“You can’t just vanish, Elena.”Damien’s voice echoed in the doorway of the shelter like thunder against glass.She didn’t look at him. Just stared at the crude map she’d drawn into the wall - coordinates, names, timelines – all of it crossed out.“All I do is brin

  • The CEO’s Vengeful Bride   Chapter 187 – “Collateral Blood”

    The smoke hadn't even cleared when the world turned against her.Two-point-one million souls lost in a flash – and the face the world saw was hers.Elena Montrose. Terrorist. Mass murderer. Betrayer of peace.They aired the footage endlessly, looping it with headlines that screamed betrayal in every language. She sat in silence, bruised and bleeding, watching herself commit atrocities she had never even imagined.The twin hadn't just stolen her image.She'd rewritten her entire legacy.Damien paced the safe-house like a caged predator. The underground bunker trembled with news broadcasts and anti-Elena protests erupting globally.Victor sat slumped at the terminal. “We’ve lost. The Montrose name… it's poison now. Global security councils just classified Elena as a *Level Omega Threat.* That’s the same tier they gave Viper.”Damien turned to Elena, his voice razor-sharp. “We need to disappear. Now. Your life—your body - is a waterfront. And that thing is winning.”Elena didn’t move. H

  • The CEO’s Vengeful Bride   Chapter 186 – “Two Elenas”

    There was a strange calm in the room where Elena stood.No alarms. No flickering screens. No screaming replica trying to overwrite her existence.Just silence.But it was the kind of silence that follows detonation – the moment after impact before the fire consumes.Victor was still staring at the monitor. His hands had gone cold.“Elena…” he said softly, “the Eidolon Drive didn’t just create one copy of you. It created the version of you that Luca believed the world needed. Cold. Calculated. Unflinching.”Elena’s mouth was dry. “And she’s active.”“Not just active.” Victor turned the screen. “She’s inside Eden now. She’s already rerouted defense protocols and commandeered several Tier-1 communication towers. The world thinks *she’s you.”“Where is she?” Damien asked, stepping forward.Victor hesitated. “That’s the thing. She’s *everywhere.* But the core trace... It’s coming from the Citadel Tower in Helix City.”Elena’s stomach dropped.The Citadel was the nerve center of Eden’s mili

  • The CEO’s Vengeful Bride   Chapter 185 – “The Soul Heist”

    The alarms hadn’t stopped for seven minutes.By the eighth, the lights died completely.Elena stood in the ruins of her family’s estate – once a home, then a fortress, and now, ground zero for Luca’s final play.The console behind her still glowed faintly, powered by backup generators. Her mother’s final message looped silently across the screen, her lips forming a single warning: *He’s coming for your soul.*Damien burst into the vault, gun drawn, face slick with sweat.“Elena, we’ve got a problem,” he said. “Something just activated in the east wing. Victor’s on his way. But I think Luca launched it.”“*Launched what?*” she asked.Damien’s eyes met hers, and for the first time in days, he looked afraid.“Something called the *Eidolon Drive.*”Elena’s pulse stumbled. She’d heard whispers – rumors locked away in abandoned research files and encrypted Syndicate texts. A failed experiment. A theoretical device banned for ethical violations.The Eidolon Drive wasn’t just about data.It w

  • The CEO’s Vengeful Bride   Chapter 184 – “Mother of Machines”

    The cold of the vault clung to Elena’s skin like the past itself had hands.Her mother’s face hovered in holographic fragments – every pixel a stab to the chest. She hadn't just survived. She had lived in the shadows, orchestrating technology that reshaped nations… and kept her daughter in the dark.*Truth is not something we reveal. It’s something we build.*Those words echoed like prophecy.Elena’s fingers trembled as she slid another drive into the console. The Red Archive lit up again. This file was labeled simply: **Genesis\_01.**A soft chime rang.Then, *her mother spoke.* "My name is Clarissa Montrose. If you’re watching this, then Eden has been breached. And my daughter… you’ve found me."Elena's heart fractured in real-time.Her mother looked tired in the recording – but resolute. Her white lab coat bore the symbol of an early version of the Syndicate’s seal, though modified, etched with the letter “Ω.”“This… is the real beginning. Long before Luca. Before the fire. Before

  • The CEO’s Vengeful Bride   Chapter 183 – “The Heart of the Lie”

    The silence in the bunker was deafening after the last transmission ended.Elena stood frozen in the dim glow of the escape lift’s emergency lights, her breath shallow. Deepfake Elena’s words echoed in her skull: “By morning, the world will belong to me.”And it wasn’t just a threat. It was a “prophecy”.Damien paced the narrow chamber as the lift halted and released them into a sublevel network of access tunnels – one of Victor’s last precautions. There were no guards. No alarms. Just shadow and stone.“They’re coming for everything,” Damien said, breaking the silence. “Victor bought us time. But if we don’t use it... we lose the war.”Elena swallowed the lump in her throat. “Victor said he was uploading source files. Do we have them?”Damien tapped his wrist screen, syncing to the vault’s terminal. “Partial upload. Fragmented packets. Some are corrupted, some clean. But there’s one thing he managed to trace before the system crashed.”He brought up the last data ping – a live transm

  • The CEO’s Vengeful Bride   Chapter 182 – “Echo Chamber”

    The bunker was buried beneath a forgotten mountain range, reachable only by an unmarked dirt road and a private aircraft flown below radar. To the outside world, it didn’t exist. Just like the truth.Elena sat in silence beside Damien inside the stealth jet, her arms folded tightly, body stiff with tension. The hum of the engine was the only sound cutting through the space between them. Neither had spoken much since Victor's coded warning pinged through the encrypted satellite line.The world outside was unraveling. Cities burning. Riots spread like fire through every continent. And the woman at the center of it all – the one with blood on her hands, rage in her voice, and apocalyptic words on her lips – was her.Or rather, a version of her that Luca had created.Deepfake Elena. The weaponized shadow of her identity.Damien finally broke the silence. “The tech is ahead of anything we’ve seen. Victor says even biometric markers are being spoofed. Voice, gait, retinal movement. They’ve

You may also like

Explore and read good novels for free
Free access to a vast number of good novels on GoodNovel app. Download the books you like and read anywhere & anytime.
Read books for free on the app
SCAN CODE TO READ ON APP
DMCA.com Protection Status