All Chapters of Between Her Shithead And The Wrong Brother : Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

Ariella’s POVThe world had turned grayscale. Layla stood still in the eastern corridor, holding a data slate without a word. Marcus’s signature was at the top. I hadn’t seen that name pulse green in weeks.Trace active. Location unstable. The message was scrawled fast, embedded with a video file. I opened it.Marcus, blood at the edge of his mouth, sat in a half-lit data vault. “If you’re seeing this, it means I failed to kill her. Celene, she’s not what she says. Her real contract isn't with Thorne. It's with something older. Deeper. Government-deep.” He coughed, then continued, “Look for Project Razor-fall. That’s where the ghosts live.”The video glitched once. Then shut down.“Where is he?” I asked.“Station 9. Under the river ruins,” Layla replied. “But someone else got there first.I turned toward the vault door. The lights inside blinked with a new rhythm—blue and red, not Thorne-coded.“Celene,” I said.Celene’s POVI sat alone inside the ghost facility. Everything here was

Damon's POV“Run it again.”Below me, the servers hummed, each red pulse another confirmation of betrayal.Layla adjusted the holo display. Fourth audit this week. Same anomalies. Same trail.”“Marcus,” I said flatly.She nodded once.I’d suspected it for weeks. Quiet siphons. Procurement deals doubled. Equipment rerouted to ghost endpoints. But now, now the data was irrefutable. Marcus hadn’t just skimmed funds. He’d rerouted empire-level assets. And he’d done it inside my system, under my name.“Scope?” I asked.Layla flicked her wrist. Projections unfolded. Twelve subsidiaries. Six deep-tier black vaults. Three strategic alliances were compromised. Marcus’s signature is in all of them, buried under synthetic clearance chains.”My jaw tightened. The floor under me may as well have cracked open. “He built his own empire inside mine.”“And you signed off on half of it,” she said quietly.I didn’t answer. My mind flipped through every boardroom, every late-night strategy session, every

Ariella's POV.“You should’ve stayed dead,” I said.Freya didn’t flinch. Rain traced the sharp edge of her jaw. “You didn’t burn my body. That was your first mistake.”“You left mid-breach. Damon died screaming your name.”She stepped closer. “And yet here you are, still bleeding trust like a fool.”I kept my hand near the blade in my coat. “Why come back now?”“Because Jace is writing your obituary, and Roe’s handing him the pen.”The observatory was gutted by age, and the war glass gone, rafters exposed like ribs. Rain hissed through holes in the dome. She stood in the shadows, head tilted, hands bare. No gun. No apology.“Roe thinks I’m dead. Let’s keep it that way.” Freya said.Like hunger with a spine. “You vanished mid-breach,” I said. “You don’t get to walk in and act like this is still your war.”Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. “It never stopped being mine. I just stopped playing your side.”I didn’t blink. “You working for Roe?”“Working him. There’s a difference.” She corr

Ariella’s POVI stepped inside, letting the holographic projectors awaken with my personal access code. Light cascaded across the walls, painting symbols in midair, data streams pulsing like veins. I had expected only financial audits, ledgers, and acquisition reports. I was prepared to sift through Marcus’s trails, to track anomalies and hidden siphons.Then the air shifted. The hum deepened. It was as if he had known I would arrive here alone. His eyes bore the weight of warnings and regrets, truths he could never voice in life. “Aria,” the projection began. “If you are seeing this, it means the worst has already come to pass. Royce. Victor. There are no friends to our names or our legacies.”The names hit harder than any physical blow. Damon had warned me in fragments, yet nothing prepared me for confirmation straight from the source.They orchestrated events to destabilize both our families. Every asset seized, every alliance corrupted, they worked behind every door, every ledger,

Ariella's POV.The safehouse should have been quiet. Something was wrong. I froze, scanning the corridor.Elsa.“Ariella,” she whispered, voice strained but alive. “They… Jace…”I crouched beside her, pressing my hand to her wound, instantly analyzing. Improvised pressure points, rapid anti-coagulant gel, stabilization. My fingers worked methodically while my mind catalogued every anomaly in the room.“Stay with me, Elsa. You’re going to live,” I said, tone low but resolute. “I won’t let them take you. Or me.”She coughed, wincing. “It… it wasn’t random. Marcus… Jace… they planned this.”The words ignited a controlled fire in me. Marcus. Jace. I lifted Elsa carefully, supporting her weight against my side. Every step toward the inner chamber was calculated. I avoided the main floor, taking maintenance tunnels, looping through emergency nodes, masking my movement with the digital decoys I had installed for months.Once inside the hidden chamber, I laid Elsa down on the reinforced cot.