جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 160

Chapter 14The hospital corridor exploded into pandemonium. Alarms blared from Lucas’s suite as red emergency lights pulsed like warning beacons. Ava’s heart seized as she broke from Jeffrey’s grasp, sprinting toward her son’s room. The masked intruder—dressed in black scrubs that blended too perfectly with the chaos—had already slipped inside.“Stop him!” Jeffrey roared, shoving past a nurse and barreling through the door. Ava followed, her designer heels abandoned somewhere behind her. Inside, the intruder hovered over Lucas’s IV line, a syringe glinting in his gloved hand.Jeffrey tackled him with brutal force, the two men crashing into a medical cart. Instruments scattered across the floor as fists flew. “Who sent you?!” Jeffrey growled, pinning the man momentarily.Ava lunged for the emergency button, but the intruder kicked free, smashing the syringe against the wall before bolting for the window. Security flooded in seconds too late, pursuing him down the fire escape. Lucas whi

Chapter 16Darkness swallowed the basement like a living entity, thick and disorienting. Ava’s breath came in sharp gasps as she pressed against Jeffrey’s side, his arm a steel band around her waist. The sudden blackout had frozen everyone—Madam Jones’s pistol glinting faintly in the emergency red glow from a distant exit sign, Cassandra’s curses echoing off the concrete walls.“Mother, put the gun down!” Jeffrey’s voice was a low command, protective fury vibrating through him. “This isn’t saving the family. This is destroying it.”Ava’s mind raced. The USB drive dug into her palm. Thirty minutes until Lucas’s kill switch. Samuel’s team was close—she could hear muffled shouts and boots from the far stairwell. She squeezed Jeffrey’s hand, signaling silently. They had to move.A single shot cracked the air. Madam Jones had fired blindly. The bullet sparked off a pipe near Ava’s head, sending hot fragments raining down. Jeffrey shoved her behind a stack of crates, returning fire with a g

Chapter 18The helipad buckled with a deafening groan, concrete fracturing like brittle ice under the force of the blast. Ava’s scream tore from her throat as the world tilted violently, wind whipping her hair across her face. Jeffrey’s blood-slicked hand clamped around her wrist like a vice, yanking her back from the crumbling edge just as a massive chunk of the platform sheared away into the night.“Hold on!” he bellowed, his wounded arm straining, blood dripping onto her skin. Below them, the city lights blurred into streaks as debris rained down. Samuel had Ethan and Ava Rose tucked against him near the stairwell door, his face a mask of grim determination despite the graze wound on his shoulder. Dr. Voss lay motionless near the wreckage—whether dead or unconscious, Ava couldn’t tell.Cassandra’s manic laughter cut through the roar. She clung to a twisted railing, one leg dangling over the abyss, the remote detonator still clutched in her fist. “You’ll never have them, Ava! Not wh

Chapter 20The ancestral manor loomed like a sentinel of secrets, its grand hall echoing with the heavy thud of the doors sealing shut. Dust motes danced in the beams of automatic lights, illuminating portraits of hollow-eyed ancestors who seemed to judge every breath Ava took. She clutched the triplets tighter, their small bodies warm but still faintly glowing with that unnatural hybrid light. Jeffrey stood tall beside her despite his injuries, his bloodied shirt a testament to his fierce protection. Samuel, pale and leaning on a medic, clutched his side where Cassandra’s blade had struck deep.“Choose wrong, and the manor becomes your tomb.” Cassandra’s holographic voice repeated, fading into sinister silence. The walls hummed with hidden machinery, biometric scanners glowing to life along a corridor leading deeper into the estate.Jeffrey’s hand found the small of Ava’s back, steady and possessive. “We do this together. No more games.” His voice carried the weight of redemption—the

Chapter 22The helicopter sliced through the clouds, carrying Ava’s fractured world toward an undisclosed safehouse in the mountains outside Winchester. The triplets slept soundly in their secured seats, the suppression chamber’s effects holding for now. Jeffrey sat beside her, his head resting against the bulkhead, eyes half-closed in exhaustion. Blood stained his clothes, but his hand never left hers—possessive, anchoring, a silent vow after years of absence. Samuel lay strapped to a medical stretcher across from them, monitors beeping steadily, his confession about Ava’s mother still echoing in her mind like a death knell.My father tested the marker on her. Half-brother. Manipulator. Savior. The labels blurred into a toxic storm.Ava stared out the window, the city shrinking below. “He raised them, Jeffrey. While you were with Cassandra, Samuel was there for bedtime stories and fevers. But the experiments… my mother’s death. How do I reconcile that?”Jeffrey lifted his head, eyes