All Chapters of Broken Illusions: Chapter 81 - Chapter 90

Lena Thompson had spent her life chasing the truth.And now, standing in the ruined cathedral, she was finally realizing something far worse than she had ever imagined.She had never been chasing the truth.She had been chasing shadows.And somewhere behind them—something else had been watching. Waiting. Moving.The woman in front of her—one of Cain’s top operatives—wasn’t here to fight. She wasn’t here to negotiate.She was here to warn her.Lena’s grip on her gun tightened.“I don’t have time for games.”The woman smiled, but it wasn’t amusement. It was pity.“Oh, Lena,” she murmured. “You still don’t get it, do you?”Lena narrowed her eyes. “Then explain it to me.”The woman studied her, like she was deciding how much Lena was actually ready to hear.Then she sighed.“You thought Cain was the endgame,” she said. “That if you took him down, the system would collapse. That you could control what came next.”Lena’s jaw clenched. “I didn’t think. I knew.”The woman tilted her head. “An

Lena Thompson had spent her life chasing power.Now, for the first time, power was chasing her.The cathedral was collapsing in flames and gunfire, the old stained glass windows shattered, moonlight cutting through the dust like silver knives. The echoes of bullets rang through the air as unknown operatives flooded the ruins, their weapons sharp, their tactics precise.This wasn’t chaos.This was calculated.Michael had her by the arm, pulling her through the wreckage as Jessica covered their retreat, snapping off shots with ruthless efficiency. Lena’s heartbeat was a thunderstorm, her thoughts moving faster than her feet.King had been standing right in front of her.He had known this was coming.And now?Now he was gone.She didn’t have time to process the implications. The moment King vanished, another player had entered the game.And Lena was running out of moves.They crashed through the cathedral’s back entrance, spilling into the moonlit streets. Paris was still on fire, its sk

Lena didn’t sleep.She hadn’t in days.Not since she saw Victor Armand—alive, calm, smiling.Not since she realized that everything she thought she had unraveled, every dark thread she’d yanked from Cain’s empire, had only pulled back the first layer of a tapestry far older, far more complex than anyone had imagined.The city around her was unraveling.Not in loud explosions or sudden collapse.But in quiet shifts—subtle realignments of power, silent consolidations of influence. The violence in the streets was only a mask. The real transformation was happening where no camera would ever see.She sat alone in the basement of a crumbling building on the edge of the Seine, the walls sweating with the cold of stone and time. An old generator hummed faintly in the background. Her laptop screen glowed softly, casting her face in pale light as maps, networks, and communications crawled across it.There was something beneath what King and Armand had built.Something even they weren’t showing.

Lena awoke to silence.Not the silence of peace, but the kind that follows catastrophe—thick, breathless, too still to be comforting.Her eyes opened slowly, vision blurred. Her ears rang faintly. Her body felt heavier than it should have, her limbs slow to obey.The bunker lights hummed quietly overhead, flickering between emergency red and pale, sterile white. The computer banks were no longer pulsing. The Helix interface had gone dormant—still alive, still conscious—but no longer predatory.The air was cold, metallic. And her mouth tasted like blood.She sat up slowly.Michael sat nearby, arms crossed, his back against the wall, eyes fixed not on her—but on the Helix terminal.Jessica stood farther off, staring at a monitor, her hand pressed flat against the screen as if trying to feel something beyond it.The three of them had just changed the world.And none of them knew what came next.Lena cleared her throat. “How long was I out?”Michael didn’t look at her. “Four hours. Maybe

The chair was colder than it looked.Lena didn’t sit. Not yet.She stood behind it, fingers brushing the polished back, feeling the chill in the steel frame, the quiet thrum beneath her fingertips. It wasn’t just a seat—it was a statement. An inheritance. A trap. A crown.The six figures around the table watched her with the same quiet intensity as before—calculating, expectant, unblinking.The silence in the room was no longer patient. It was pressurized.Armand finally broke it. “You can’t hesitate forever.”Lena turned her gaze on him, slow and deliberate. “I’m not hesitating. I’m thinking.”Watanabe raised an eyebrow. “Same difference, at this level.”Jessica stepped forward. “If you sit in that chair, Lena, you’re not just crossing a line—you’re erasing it.”Michael said nothing. He didn’t have to. His eyes were locked on hers, a quiet plea beneath the surface of that stoic face.Don’t.Lena looked at him. Really looked.She remembered him pulling her from the chaos when her brea