All Chapters of Breaking The Spotlight: Chapter 171 - Chapter 179

They’d celebrated on paper: footage, arrests, feeds, trending hashtags. In the glow of victory, no one had noticed the blank space Vega left behind, the thing men like him always planned, the contingency in plain sight. That omission was the cost of complacency.Adrian read the manifest again as if it might change. The island arrest, the handful of arrests that played on loop across morning news, clever theater, a double for the cameras. Damien’s jaw had tightened the moment the flight logs crossed with an obscure port authority ping. Elias had found the pattern, a series of deliberate time delays that made the island “capture” perfect for broadcast but useless for closure. Vega was gone before the cheering even reached the runway.Now, a new red dot pulsed on Damien’s map, the old studio complex, the place where Luna had first learned to hold a note and where Vega had first taught her how to bend light around her voice. He’d made a shrine out of her beginning; she’d make a pyre of it

The world didn’t go quiet after Vega’s arrest, it roared louder than ever.Headlines screamed: The Phoenix Artist Triumphs!Talk shows dissected Luna’s every expression, and social feeds overflowed with edits of her standing tall as Vega’s empire crumbled.But inside Adrian’s glass penthouse, the war room turned sanctuary, the noise was miles away.Luna sat curled on the couch, barefoot, knees drawn close, wrapped in Adrian’s oversized hoodie. It still smelled faintly of him, dark cedar and control. The scent anchored her in a world that still felt unsteady beneath her feet.Adrian stood by the windows, phone pressed to his ear, his tone coldly efficient.“Seal the media contracts. She doesn’t speak to anyone unless it’s cleared through me,” he said sharply, “and make sure the footage of Vega’s confession doesn’t leak unedited. No one turns this into another spectacle.”He hung up and turned, his sharp edges softening when he looked at her. “It’s over, Luna.”She looked up at him, the

“Hell doesn’t burn, it waits.”The city glittered, unaware of the storm about to tear through it again.Luna sat beside Adrian, her fingers laced with his, but the tension between them wasn’t about closeness. It was control. They were both holding on, in different ways.“Veronica Hale,” she murmured. The name alone felt toxic. “You think she’s running Orion from prison?”Adrian didn’t answer immediately. His jaw flexed, gaze fixed on the encrypted tablet glowing in his lap. “Not running it,” he said finally, “directing it. Orion doesn’t need her hands, it just needs her voice, and she’s still got connections deep enough to make the government sweat.”He tapped a screen. A holographic layout appeared between them, Vega’s old network. Dozens of nodes pulsing red. “Half of these came online in the last forty-eight hours,” he continued. “Coordinated through servers that shouldn’t exist. Someone’s funding her from the inside.”Luna frowned. “But who’d risk helping her?”“People who still b

The cabin was quiet except for the rain hammering the windows and the soft crackle of the fire. Luna leaned back against the plush rug, the warmth from the flames kissing her skin, but it was nothing compared to the heat radiating from Adrian. He stood close, the shadow of him stretching long and dark across the room, every movement deliberate, predatory, and intoxicating.He reached for her, brushing a strand of wet hair from her face. “You’ve been teasing me all day,” he murmured, voice low, velvet-dark, “and now, I plan to have you.”Her pulse jumped at the tone, a mixture of command and promise, and she swallowed hard and whispered, "let's see."Adrian smirked, that familiar dangerous curve of his lips that always made her knees go weak. “Not like that,” he said, voice rough. “Not with words. I want to feel, see and taste every inch of you.”He lowered himself to his knees, eyes dark and hungry, hands sliding along her thighs in a trail of fire. Luna gasped, body arching instincti