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

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

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

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

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

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