All Chapters of Daddy's Little Secret : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

203 Chapters

Chapter Eleven

MelissaThere's a period of time after trauma during which everything stops, during which pain and fear even thought, becomes quiet. It is not peace, it is stillness.That was where i was for the next twenty-four hours.Jamal had saved us. He carried me through flames and metal and betrayal. But even in safety within the cabin that we'd taken refuge in now, nothing inside of me was complete.I was in someone else's clothes, someone else's bed and as far as Maddox was concerned, someone else's self.A vessel, a copy, a lie.I stared up at the wooden ceiling like it were going to say something. As soon as i shut my eyes, there she was, Subject Zero. Her face was mine but hollow. More lost like she'd experienced all my pain twice and still had nothing.My body ached where the drugs had ravaged me and my head felt loose and slippery like something inside had been reorganized silently.Jamal came in with tea. No words, just heat. His piercing eyes always so much in charge, were now dull. F

Chapter Twelve

MelissaBlood...the ring of the shot still in my head after silence returned but it wasn't the noise that kept me on the floor, it was the sight of her and my mother crumpled up like paper and a blossom of red spreading on her chest.I couldn't breathe and couldn't move. My brain wrestled back and forth with two impossible realities, she was alive and now she was possibly going to die before my very eyes.Alarms were ringing in every direction, dousing the corridor with red emergency lights. Through it all, though i could hear Jamal's voice yelling my name but far away like he was shouting down a pipe.I went down to the ground next to her."Mom. No. No, no, no stay with me. Please stay."Her eyelids fluttered weakly. There was pain, certainly but something stronger as well such as regret. Her lips opened and her breath catching."Sorry" she whispered, blood frothing at the edges of her lips "I wanted to tell you sooner about everything but Jared knew he always did."I gripped her han

Chapter Thirteen

MelissaThe voice stopped me dead in my tracks.It wasn't the pitch or the beat. It was the confidence, that terrible familiarity that raised every hair on the back of my neck. She sounded like me, looked like me but she wasn't me."Jamal" I whispered, my own voice barely audible "That is not a tape." i said"I know."The copy—no, the replica stepped forward out of the shadows. My face shone reflected the pale glimmer of the moon but her eyes glinted askew. Flat like there was no spark of life inside them. Only code, math and compulsion."Melissa" she repeated, voice weighed down with ersatz-sweetness "Your existence ceases this night"Jamal raised his gun to her without hesitation "Don't take one step."She tilted her head, smiling "What are you going to do? Kill her? Or yourself? Because let's be honest" She moved one slow step closer "You can't even tell which one of us is real anymore"A red beam cut across Jamal's chest then his shoulder. Lasers, multiple from the tree line. We w

Chapter Fourteen

JamalI stood on the helipad atop the estate with pounding heart and beat of blades whizzing through the wind above. My phone buzzed again.Another text from her.Melissa: You lied. Again.It tore me apart because this time, she was not wrong.I had spent my whole life constructing an empire based on precision—on rules. On keeping the personal at a distance in the professional and Melissa had come into my world with flames in her eyes, reducing all the walls that i had constructed to ashes, kissing me like i were not a weapon and loving me like i were not broken.Now everything that i had tried to protect her from was falling apart.The pilot gave a nod behind me. Takeoff was close at hand but i wasn't looking at the jet.I was thinking of her.Flashback: Two hours earlier.The boardroom was as silent as a funeral home, tension weighing as heavily as the marble floors that supported our feet and my uncle Barrett leaned back in his leather chair like he was the king of the castle becau

Chapter Fifteen

MelissaI believed i knew fear. I believed i had tasted it in the chilly labs and in the sinister corners of my stepfather's manor house, through the interminable nights in which secrets settled into my abdomen like a toxin but within that Parisian manor house witnessing two men with Jamal's looks confront each other and my perception of fear shifted into something feral.They were identical. Physically yes but in the subtleties too, the cadence of speech, the tilt of the jaw when they were thinking. The only variation was in the eyes.One pair burned with icy calculation. The other was a frenzied edge of desperation."Back up" my Jamal growled, nudging me softly but strongly behind him.The imposter smiled advancing "You were never supposed to go rogue, brother but love does that to weak minds""Shut up" Jamal growled "She's not a mission. She's not an asset, she's everything"The instant was shattered by the sound of a gunshot.Jamal ducked to the left, dragging me down with him as

Chapter Sixteen

MelissaThe fire danced across the lab like a living thing, swallowing wires, papers, memories and the fake Jamal stood silhouetted against the chaos and his presence radiating calm like this was all part of his plan.My father’s grip on my hand tightened “Melissa, listen to me.”Eleanor dragged a fire extinguisher from the wall, shouting over the roar “Get him out. I’ll hold him off!”"Are you insane?" I bellowed "He'll kill you!""No," she said, eyes flashing "He needs me alive."She threw the fire extinguisher into the room and smoke poured into the air momentarily blinding us.Daniel pushed a vial into my hand. A tiny silver one."What's this?" I asked.His ragged breath whispered "The original Nova before it was corrupted. If it reaches the servers below Geneva, it'll reboot the whole system. Destroy the override tech forever.""Why me?"He looked at me like i already got it."Because the only person who cannot be overridden is you."Smoke began to clear and the pretender moved s

Chapter Seventeen

MelissaNot a dream.Her face was real.I gagged on the smell of antiseptic and steel as i tried to move but my limbs felt leaden, like they were someone else's. Slow waves of pain curled my nerves.But i saw her there. Looking down at me."Hello, sweetheart."Eleanor Kingsley.My mother, my ghost and my myth."I have to say" she said, kneeling by the cot "you surpassed expectations. That override collapse? Spectacular. Even i couldn't have done that better."Her hand swept a lock of hair aside, brushing against my cheek. I pulled away as far as the restraints allowed."You're supposed to be dead," I rasped.Her smile was cold and calculated. "Yes, well, I'm full of surprises."The last picture of her I'd seen was fifteen years old. Here she was, barely changed—still strong, still in control, still wrapped in secrets like silk."Where is Jamal?" I barked."In transit" she said, standing up "Don't worry about it, he'll be here soon and i wanted a moment to myself first. Mother to daugh

Chapter Eighteen

JamalQuiet isn't so much the absence of noise, it's how you adapt and at the moment, we were ignoring all the rules I'd ever learned about how to survive.The hum of the drone sliced through us, slicing through the air like metal through skin. I felt Eleanor's heat before i heard her voice. It was the voice I'd heard in nightmares, in black-bagged debriefs and on coded files i was never supposed to see. It was commanding, cold and recognizable."Run" I spat and grab Melissa's wrist.We sprinted down the alleyway at the back of the safehouse ducking beneath the guttering lamplight and my mind calculated exit routes, casualty totals and probabilities. All of them were bad."She's alive" Melissa panted at my shoulder and her voice strained with amazement "How the devil is she still alive?""Clones, backup, stand-ins—it doesn't count. That woman's real and that's not an impersonator or a stunt double".We ducked quickly down a maintenance corridor i remembered from a botched op four year

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Nineteen: The Silence That ScreamedMelissa POVThe gunshot still echoed through my bones as my father's body collapsed in a heap just feet away from me, his dead eyes open wide and still clutching the truth he'd never get to share as K3 loomed behind him, his pistol lowered and her eyes cold and calculating then my breath caught in my throat just as everything inside me screamed and yet no sound escaped."Why?" I managed to whisper, trembling.K3 put the gun away and walked toward me, moonlight calm and serene. "He was going to reset the vault and erase us both."Us both? i stared at her as she looked like me, moved like me, but her voice lacked the quaver, the pain, the humanness i was drowning in. Jared and Eleanor's perfect backup and the failsafe.Jamal stood in front of me, protecting me. "You didn't have to kill him.""He already killed himself the day he made her," K3 said, waving his hand in my direction like i was the sin and not the salvation. "You think he wanted t

Chapter Twenty

Jamal's POVI had known betrayal. Felt it burn beneath my skin like acid, disguise itself as love, loyalty and friendship but nothing could have ready me for the shaking voice of Melissa, whispering "She's still alive, Jamal and she's looking for you"Eleanor Kingsley.The mention of her name was sufficient to curdle my blood but the fact that she was here alive, watching, playing the game once more made it all the more intolerable as we stood under the ruins of an old Parisian chapel in the corner of Montmartre, its weathered stones soaked in the din of secrets. Melissa's fists were in my coat material, and her heart thundered like war drums against mine."Are you sure it was her?" I asked, and my voice was raw.She nodded, not trusting herself to speak with her eyes on fire and rebellion, now held something deeper, more horrific, and a memory she couldn’t voice yet.A gust of wind swept through the broken stained-glass windows, shattering the stillness and behind us, Eden tightened

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