All Chapters of Shadows of Silk & Steel: A Billionaire's Secret, A Bodyguar: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

The forest swallowed them, a dark, silent embrace after the sterile terror of the villa. They moved on instinct, putting distance between themselves and the sirens that now wailed in the distance, a chorus for the dead and the disgraced. The adrenaline that had carried them through the chase, the confrontation, the theft, began to ebb, leaving behind a hollow, trembling exhaustion.And a cold, hard kernel of anger.It festered as they trudged through the undergrowth, the only sounds their ragged breath and the crunch of frozen leaves. The image of the tattoo—the elegant, damning compass—was burned onto Anton’s retina. The Meridian Collective. The name was a key unlocking a vault of dread. His father’s weary warning, the sudden, inexplicable setbacks in the early days of the Aethelred project, the way certain board members had always seemed to move in unison… it all slotted into a horrific, coherent picture.A picture Sabe might have seen forming long before him.The stolen cryptograph

They found a different kind of refuge: a 24-hour internet café in the basement of a student district, a grimy, neon-lit cave smelling of stale energy drinks and despair. It was a place of digital ghosts, where no one asked questions or looked up from their screens. They claimed a corner booth, thawing their frozen hands on the warm sides of ancient, humming CPUs. The stolen cryptographic key was a live wire in Sabe’s pocket. The Meridian was a dragon they had named. But the path forward was a blinding whiteout.They needed a plan, an entry point into the Freeport’s impregnable vault where the exchange was set for midnight. Sabe was scrolling through dark web forums on a rented terminal, a place where whispers of the Zorya and the Meridian sometimes slipped through the cracks of encrypted chat rooms. The public-facing web, meanwhile, was ablaze with news: “Rogers Industries CEO Missing,” “Violence at Geneva Villa Linked to Corporate Espionage,” and the one that made Anton’s stomach tur

The stolen van, reeking of old produce and fear, became their final sanctuary before the storm. They’d parked it in the dank, echoing the bowels of a multi-story car park near the Freeport, a concrete crypt that swallowed sound. The hacker’s drives were secure in Anton’s inner pocket, their weight a constant, humming reminder of the precipice they stood upon. The plan was set, a watch was synchronized, weapons—a second knife Sabe had “found,” a length of heavy pipe—were checked and re-checked. There was nothing left to do but wait for the witching hour.And waiting was the enemy.Anton sat slumped in the passenger seat, his head against the cold glass, trying to force his mind into the calm, analytical state that had seen him through countless boardroom battles. But this wasn't a hostile takeover. This was a descent into the underworld. The faces of the day flickered behind his eyes: Evelyn’s cold triumph, Marcus’s final, choked despair, the eerie blankness of Darius’s dead gaze, the

The SLEEPING message on the console glowed a soft, malevolent green. The packet was in, a digital parasite coiled around the heart of the transaction. For a moment, the only sound in the sterile server room was the relentless hum of the machines and the frantic thud of Anton’s own heart. Ninety seconds.Sabe was already moving, his eyes on the east wall. He located the access panel Leora’s schematic had indicated—a plain, brushed steel square secured by four recessed screws. He had the multi-tool out in a flash, the bit clicking into place.Seventy-five seconds.The first screw came out with a soft sigh. The second. Anton stood guard at the base of the stairs, his ears straining for any sound from the gallery above. The looped camera feed bought them time, but it wouldn't mask the sound of the panel coming off, or their escape.Sixty seconds.The third screw dropped into Sabe’s palm. He was working with a controlled, desperate speed, his injured shoulder clearly protesting the precise

The derelict mill had served its purpose as a temporary crypt. They emerged into the pre-dawn gloom, the sky a bruised purple bleeding into grey. The stolen car was a liability they couldn’t afford, so they moved on foot, sticking to the industrial riverfront’s labyrinth of alleys and loading docks, two more shadows in a landscape of forgotten industry. The cold was a penetrating ache, a stark counterpoint to the memory of their shared warmth behind the turbine.The plan was skeletal: get to the Freeport, use the chaos of Leora’s data blast as cover, witness the end, and then… vanish. It was less a strategy and more a direction to fall in. But first, they needed one thing from the lakeside safehouse. Not the suitcase—that was a relic of the old war. They needed the cash Sabe had hidden in a waterproof compartment beneath the floorboards. Their last reserves are disappearing.It was a risk. The safehouse was compromised the moment they’d left it, a known node in their shattered network