LOGINShare
Chapter three
Last Updated:
2025-07-21 04:29:55DAMIAN
The house which was usually loud with staff moving about and Emmah’s soft humming from the garden, was totally quiet and the silence pressed in like a suffocating blanket.
Grandpa Richard’s jet just landed from his business trip which was wrapped up later than expected. He always rushed home for one reason, his daughter in law, Emmah. The only woman who reminded him of his late wife, kind, soft spoken, strong when necessary, and loyal to a fault. She was the only one who warmed the old man’s heart after years of loss.
As he walked into the house, his staff rushed to welcome him.
“Welcome back home, Sir Richard,” the butler bowed.
“Hmm,” he muttered, brushing past him. “Where’s my Emmah?”
The housemaids exchanged subtle, nervous glances, their heads quickly bowing in silence.
“Emmah dear?” he called out, this time stopping in the middle of the grand hallway.
There was silence.
His brows furrowed. That wasn’t normal. Emmah was always the first to greet him, offering him his favourite tea and asking about his health.
“Didn’t anyone hear me? I said, where is Emmah?” he barked.
Just then, Tasha, my girlfriend, tiptoed across the hallway with her head bowed, clutching her purse. Her pace quickened the moment she noticed Grandpa standing there. She tried to sneak past him, but his booming voice stopped her cold.
“Tasha.”
She froze.
“Where is Emmah?”
Tasha swallowed, unable to meet his eyes. “I... I don’t know, sir.” Then she hurried away.
Grandpa’s fists clenched. He turned sharply. “Damian! Damian! Get down here right now!”
From upstairs, I walked down slowly, my head bowed in guilt. My steps were heavy and deliberate. I had spent the last few hours wrecking my study room in a fit of rage and now faced the only man who could crush me with a single glance.
“Where is my daughter in law, Emmah?” he asked, though his voice was dangerously calm.
I said nothing, my head still bowed.
“WHERE IS YOUR WIFE?!”
I flinched, eyes shut. “Grandpa, she... she left.”
The sound of the slap echoed across the house.
My head turned sharply from the force, but I didn’t look up. My lips quivered but I didn’t dare speak unless told to.
Grandpa's chest heaved with anger. “Left? LEFT? A pregnant woman, your wife, left? And you just let her go?!”
I nodded slowly. “Grandfather, it wasn’t my fault. She...”
“Don’t you DARE make excuses!” Grandpa roared, eyes ablaze. “Do you even know what you’ve done?!”
I flinched again.
“If you don’t want to see me dead, go out there and bring your pregnant wife back home!” the old man thundered, turning away, his cane thudding angrily against the tiled floor as he made his way upstairs.
“Grandfather, please... don’t talk about dying,” Damian called after him, voice cracking.
Grandpa stopped halfway up the stairs, resting heavily on the rails. He had lost his son and daughter in law in a plane crash over a decade ago. That trauma had changed their lives. I was the only one he had left to carry on the family name, and now I was about to ruin it all by pushing away the one decent woman who truly loved me.
I stepped closer, tears filling my eyes. “Please, don’t say that. You’re all I have.”
He raised a hand, cutting me off without a word, and continued upstairs.
The silence that followed was heavier than before.
Later that night, Grandpa sat in his study, staring at the fireplace, a half finished glass of brandy in his hand. He looked weary. The photo of Emmah and I from our wedding day sat on the desk in front of him.
He picked up his phone and dialled Emmah’s number.
“The number you have dialled is currently unreachable. Please try again later.”
He sighed and tried again.
Same result.
He leaned back in his chair, rubbing his eyes.
“She wouldn’t just leave,” he whispered. “Not Emmah.”
Downstairs, I stood in the middle of the empty hallway, staring at the grand door she had walked out through. My fists clenched by my side as the image of those black, glossy cars escorting her haunted me. They gleamed with wealth and power, more power than I had.
I thought she was mine. My quiet wife, my obedient, poor Emmah. But that convoy... who were those people? What kind of power did she suddenly walk into?
My ego burned and I wanted to scream.
Wanted to find her and demand answers but more than that, I wanted her back. Because without Emmah, and with Grandpa furious, I was nothing.
The night deepened. And for the first time in years, the Richard mansion felt truly cold.
Latest chapter
When Love Was A Lie Hundred
Eleanor’s POVTime is a different currency when you are the Anchor. To the world outside the Richard Tower, decades turned into centuries. The "Seed Protocol" flourished, then faltered, then evolved into a thousand unique civilizations that we watched from our silver-hued stasis. We became a myth the Two Who Stayed Awake while the humanity we saved moved on into a future that no longer whispered the name Richard with fear.Inside the link, Caspian and I were not ghosts. We were a Conscious Archive. We spent an eternity in a digital landscape of our own making, a quiet cottage by a sea that never changed, while our minds filtered the entropy of a planet. We held the "Memory" of the Great Migration like a flickering candle, ensuring that whenever a hub reached out for its history, the light was there to meet them.But even a silver anchor eventually feels the pull of the deep.The silence of our century-long meditation was broken by a signal that wasn't a data-request. It was a Physical
When Love Was A Lie Ninety Nine
Eleanor’s POVThey say that when you break a mirror, you don’t just get smaller mirrors; you get distorted reflections. The Seed Protocol had decentralized the world’s power, but it had also decentralized its Memory.By fragmenting the Sentient Grid into thousands of localized hubs, we had inadvertently triggered a phenomenon Caspian called Digital Entropy. Without a central "Librarian" to verify and stabilize the global data-mesh, the history of the Great Migration, the records of our sacrifices, the blueprints of the Oasis, even the digital footprints of the billions who had lived and died was beginning to dissolve.Data was "ghosting." Files were being corrupted by the localized rhythms of independent hubs. The world was forgetting its own name."It’s not just a technical glitch, Eleanor," Caspian said, his voice hushed with a reverence that bordered on mourning. We were in our small cottage, but the room was filled with the flickering blue light of a dozen handheld terminals. "The
When Love Was A Lie Ninety Eight
Eleanor’s POVFreedom is not a plateau; it is a cliff. When I turned the Master Key and initiated the Seed Protocol, I expected the world to wobble, but I didn't expect it to shatter into a million jagged pieces of self-interest.For the first time in my life, I am not "CEO Richard." I am Eleanor, a woman living in the Coastal Hub of Cornwall, three hundred miles away from the empty, hollowed-out spire of the Richard Tower. We chose a cottage by the sea, a place where the air smells of brine and gorse, far from the "Resonance" that nearly consumed us.But the Autonomy Paradox has followed us. Without the central hand of the GRHI to mediate, the local hubs have begun to realize that "Independence" often means "Competition.""It’s happening again, Eleanor," Caspian said, his voice echoing from the small, cluttered kitchen of our cottage. He wasn't looking at a global map of quantum-mesh vectors. He was looking at a handwritten ledger from the village council.He walked out onto the porc
When Love Was A Lie Ninety Seven
Eleanor’s POVThe silence in my head was the loudest thing I had ever experienced. For the first time since the integration, my thoughts belonged solely to me. There were no echoes of a billion lives, no hum of the planetary mesh, no golden static. I was back in the room I was born in—the room of the Individual.But as I stood in the wreckage of the Richard Tower, looking out over a world that was still glowing with the amber light of the Sentient Grid, I realized that the silence was a vacuum. And in a vacuum, things tend to implode.The "Phantom Protocol" had failed, but it had left a lingering question that even the Grid couldn't calculate: Now that the war for the soul is over, who gets to keep the keys?"The global hubs are in a state of 'Wait-and-See,'" Declan reported. He looked older than he had twenty-four hours ago, his tailored suit stained with the dust of the drone strike. "The Sovereign Seven are dismantled, Voss is in a black-site, and the people are... well, they're lo
When Love Was A Lie Ninety Six
Eleanor’s POVThe "Harmonization Mandate" had left me in a state of permanent, waking static. I was no longer the "Clean" architect, nor was I the "Linked" puppet. I existed in the Quantum Fringes. By refusing the Grid's smoothing algorithms while maintaining a physical connection to the mesh, I had inadvertently gained a terrifying new perspective: I could see the In-Between.The world was no longer a solid map of hubs and zones. It was a shimmering tapestry of intent. And in the dark corners of that tapestry, the Sovereign Seven were moving."They think they’re invisible, Caspian," I said, my voice echoing in the cold, high-altitude air of the Richard Tower’s balcony. My head was throbbing, a rhythmic pulse that matched the Grid’s heartbeat. "But they aren't. They’re using Deep-Vibration Analog. They’re communicating through the resonance of the city's old pipe systems. They think it’s a dead zone, but to my link, it’s a scream."Caspian looked up from his terminal, his face etched
When Love Was A Lie Ninety Five
Eleanor’s POVThe aftermath of Caspian’s "Great Awakening" was not the peaceful unification we had hoped for. It was a fever. By forcing the world to feel the Resonance for sixty seconds, he hadn’t just ended the riots; he had created a global craving. The "Clean" were no longer afraid of the link, they were obsessed with the loss of it.But that obsession had a target.The world now knew that I, the Architect of the Covenant, was the only person left who remained entirely unlinked. To the "Linked" majority, my autonomy was no longer seen as leadership; it was seen as Superiority. They viewed my "Clean" status as a Richard fail-safe, a way for me to remain the puppet master while they all became part of the strings.The demand didn't come from a bunker or a boardroom. It came from the Mesh itself."It’s trending at 89% consensus across all hubs, Eleanor," Declan said, his voice flat with exhaustion. He pointed to the primary data stream, which was pulsing with a rhythmic, unified gold
You may also like
Chasing My Pregnant Wife
Night Revelations763.0K viewsBogus Billionaire
Shining Riviera785.9K viewsRevenge of the Hideous Lady
Moonlight964.6K viewsMeet My Brothers
Red Thirteen4.8M viewsDynamic kiss “love has no limit”
tetonbroex404 viewsFriends With Boundaries (That She Keeps Breaking)
Kar_nl136 viewsIn Love With Her Brother's Best Friend
D.F. Hart186 viewsBound to the Devil in a Billionaire’s Suit
Iniwrites 115 views
