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Chapter 16: The power outage

作者: Oby Jennifer
last update 公開日: 2026-04-25 04:42:33
Lena Tao had written a letter to her son.

I sat there and stared at it on the screen for a long time without opening it. I saw her handwriting, the same careful script from the old alumni photo. The date in the corner, three days before she died. The way the letter started with his name, Adrian, she wrote it, knowing that these words might be the last thing she ever gave him.

I closed the folder and thought about what it meant that this letter existed inside an encrypted file, buried in the sa
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  • The Playboy's Forced Bride   Chapter 100: Show Me

    My phone rang at five forty-one. Nineteen minutes before the deadline Nathaniel had given me. I had been sitting at the kitchen table since he left around four thirty. The laptop sat open in front of me with the folder visible on the screen. Everything I had worked on for eighteen months was right there, one click away. I was not typing or pacing or trying to distract myself. I just sat with the decision I had made, waiting for the moment when waiting would turn into action.I had told Nathaniel that Adrian would call. I believed it then, and I still believed it when the screen lit up with his name. I let it ring once. This was not like months ago when a call from him in the middle of the day felt new and I needed a second to steady myself. I answered right away.Silence came through the line, not the empty kind from a bad connection. This was full and heavy, the kind that happens when someone has decided to reach out but needs a moment before the first words come out. I did not rush

  • The Playboy's Forced Bride   Chapter 99: Nathaniel’s Framework

    Nathaniel arrived at the estate at three thirty. He had called twenty minutes earlier to let me know he was coming. That short heads-up was no accident. It gave me just enough time to get ready without making this feel like a casual visit. Twenty minutes was efficient. It said: This is not a personal visit, this is a working meeting, be present for it.He came in without the particular stiffness that had characterized our previous interactions. He had always kept a careful distance before, as if he were assessing me. This time felt different. He had moved beyond judging me. The situation mattered more now than any old assessments.He sat down across from me at the kitchen table. No greetings or offers of coffee. He got straight to business.“The story is going to run,” he said. “That is no longer in doubt. The other outlet’s piece this morning gave enough details that the full documents will reach the public. The only questions left are when and how it happens.”“I know,” I replied.N

  • The Playboy's Forced Bride   Chapter 98: The Shape of Three Years

    Adrian POVI ordered more coffee at noon. This time I drank it, the warm liquid felt good after hours of sitting still. Three pages of notes now covered the small hotel notepad. My handwriting grew tighter as the morning stretched on, the way it always did when I dug deep into complex problems. I had been at it since seven fifteen. Now past noon, and I still was not finished.I had moved past the news articles. They were useful noise at best. Some parts were accurate, others incomplete or twisted. The real answers lived in the official documents. Shell company registrations, beneficial ownership records, planning approvals, transaction histories that crossed three countries over fifteen years. These were the raw materials, and I knew how to read them. Fifteen years inside corporate structures like these had taught me what the words really meant, what the gaps meant. I knew what it looked like when something had been built to avoid being found.This fraud had been constructed with gre

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    Adrian’s POVI ordered coffee at nine that morning but left the cup untouched. The room at the Meridian Grand felt plain on purpose. Neutral colors, simple furniture, and nothing personal anywhere. It gave me exactly what I needed. Four walls with no history attached, no reminders of the apartment or the life I had walked out of that morning. I chose it so I could think without anything pulling at my emotions.I had been thinking since seven fifteen. The hallway conversation kept replaying in my head. Her face when she said she could not tell me the article was wrong. The hope that died right there between us. I needed space after that, and this hotel room gave me that space.The first thing I did was read the competing outlet’s article again. In the hallway, I had only scanned it. Shock and the familiar surroundings made it hard to take in fully. Here in the quiet room I read every word with care. I went through it paragraph by paragraph the way I handle important documents that nee

  • The Playboy's Forced Bride   Chapter 96: Hargreave Accelerates

    The filing came through at two in the afternoon. It was not the big story I had been working on. This was a regulatory document. The kind that slips through quiet channels while everyone focuses on the loud crisis. It moved like normal corporate paperwork in the background. I caught it because I had set up alerts months ago when the proxy fight first started. My system tracked every possible thread.The alert hit my phone at two fourteen. I opened it right away.Then I sat completely still for a long moment. The kitchen counter felt hard under my arms, I read the whole thing again, slower this time. My stomach dropped as the pieces clicked together.Hargreave had filed an accelerated proxy motion. This was not the same one from before. That earlier attempt had failed during the Caldwell meeting and the Friday board session. Five key votes shut it down. This new filing took a different path, it targeted another committee through a different rule. It used a specific clause in the compan

  • The Playboy's Forced Bride   Chapter 95: What the Papers Say

    I read every single word out there, that was how I had always handled stories that broke without me in the middle of them. I did not skim or pick out the easy parts. I went through it all like a full audit. Every article, every social media thread that gained real attention, every quote from experts, every mention of board members, and every analyst trying to explain why Tao Industries’ stock was falling fast. I took notes the whole time.The professional side of me was the only thing I could count on that morning. My thoughts about Adrian felt too messy. Same with Nathaniel’s offer and the long tangle of eighteen months spent living a double life. Those pieces were clouded by feelings and that quiet click of the door closing. But digging through information? That part stayed clean. It was what I knew how to do, even when everything else felt off balance.I sat at the kitchen counter with my laptop open and a fresh notebook beside it. The apartment stayed quiet except for the low hum

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