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Lahat ng Kabanata ng The CEO'S Dead Wife: A Marriage Made In Hell!: Kabanata 141 - Kabanata 150

168 Kabanata

Chapter 141

ABIGAIL'S POVSleep never came.By dawn, the city looked deceptively normal again. News channels reported. “gas main rupture” three blocks from our temporary operations floor. The fire was contained. No civilian casualties.But we knew better.The Architect had erased one of his own extraction units in real time.Alexander hadn’t left my side all night. He stood by the wall of screens now, arms crossed, eyes bloodshot but sharp. Ava sat at the center console, rerouting data streams, her fingers flying across the keyboard with a kind of desperate precision.“They’re moving assets,” she said quietly.“How many?” I asked.She hesitated. “More than Tristan.”“Show me.”The city grid expanded across the largest monitor. Then another. Then three more.Colored markers blinked into existence. Red. Blue. Yellow.Each representing a flagged child within Project Heirline’s custody network.“They’re synchronized,” Ava whispered. “Look at the timestamps.”Alexander leaned closer. “That’s not rando

Chapter 142

ABIGAIL'S POV I replayed the coordinates until the numbers blurred into meaningless light.They had flashed for less than a second before the feed died.“Run it again,” I said, my voice hoarse from lack of sleep.Ava leaned closer to her monitor, isolating the corrupted frames. “I’ve reconstructed seventy percent of the string. The rest was overwritten when they killed the stream.”“Seventy is enough,” Alexander said quietly from behind me.It had to be.The room smelled like burnt coffee and overheated circuits. None of us had left since the broadcast. A case study on how long a mother could endure.Ava projected the partial coordinates across the largest screen. The map expanded, there were gridlines, traffic flows, hospital zones, abandoned municipal structures.“Radius?” I asked.“Three possible clusters,” she replied. “But every signal ping inside that radius is ghosted.”“Define ghosted.”She hesitated. “Mirrored signals. Artificial echoes layered over real ones. If we chase o

Chapter 143

ABIGAIL'S POV.Operation Phantom was born at 4:12 a.m., in a room that smelled like stale coffee, overheated processors, and fear none of us were willing to name.I stood at the head of the table, palms braced against the cold surface, staring at the schematics Ava had projected across the wall. The abandoned pediatric rehabilitation center glowed in blue wireframe — corridors, stairwells, ventilation shafts, structural weak points. It looked harmless reduced to lines and numbers.It wasn’t.“We go in quiet,” I said, my voice steady in a way I didn’t entirely feel. “No perimeter breach alarms. No power disruptions. If Heirline senses an anomaly, they’ll relocate him before we even reach the second corridor.”Avion leaned back in his chair, arms folded across his chest, dark eyes calculating. He had the kind of stillness that meant he was already ten moves ahead. “We’ll need two shadow teams,” he said. “One to ghost the east entrance, one to float near the underground access tunnel. No

Chapter 144

ABIGAIL'S POV I turned, slowly, because slow movements were my only chance. My fingers dug into Tristan’s blanket, my knuckles whitening, my chest tightening as I prepared to face the unexpected. And then I saw her.She wasn’t faceless. She wasn’t masked, and she wasn’t some ghost in a dark suit, like I had anticipated from the intel we’d gathered. No. The Architect, the woman they had whispered about, the operator behind the smokescreen, the one nobody had ever laid eyes on, was standing there. And she knew me. Knew me in a way that chilled every inch of me.Her eyes, sharp and icy, locked onto mine, and my stomach turned over. There was recognition there. “Well, well,” she said softly, almost playfully, and I could feel the layers of mockery underneath each syllable. “Abigail. You always were predictable. Fierce, reckless, stubborn… maternal instincts running wild. And yet here you are, trapped in a game you’ve never even played to its rules.”I clenched my jaw. My body was tense,

Chapter 145

ABIGAIL'S POVI froze in the corridor, my body taut with every ounce of tension, Tristan pressed tightly to my chest. The van’s engine roared like a beast as it began to pull away, dragging my son farther from my reach. My fingers curled around the blanket, knuckles white, and my chest heaved fear.I whispered sharply into the earpiece, my voice barely audible but full of command. “Alexander… now. Diversion. Activate everything. Now.”His voice crackled back, calm but urgent. “On it. I’m hitting the traffic grid, the security cams, the alarm systems. You have… maybe three, four minutes before they notice.”I bit back a curse. Three minutes. Three minutes to stop the people who had Tristan, who were trained to anticipate every move. Three minutes to save my son. I forced myself to breathe, slowly, deliberately, though every heartbeat was agony, pounding like a drum in my skull.I crouched slightly, my eyes scanning the corridor, every potential hiding spot for the operatives. My mind w

Chapter 146

ABIGAIL'S POV The voice didn’t fade after the first threat.It lingered. It seeped into the air around the van, curling into my lungs, sliding down my spine like ice.“Mother,” it repeated, smooth and almost patient. “Tristan’s life is contingent on your obedience. You will follow instructions. You will not attempt breach. You will not engage the guards. Failure to comply will result in irreversible consequences.”My hands curled into fists so tightly my nails bit into my palms. I barely felt the sting. My entire body had gone cold, like my veins were pumping liquid steel instead of blood.Alexander’s voice cut in sharply through my earpiece. “Abigail, listen to me. Do not move. This is psychological leverage. If you charge, they’ll escalate.”I swallowed hard, staring at the sealed metal doors of the van as if I could burn through them with my gaze alone. Tristan was inside. My son. My heart. My reason.“Do you hear me?” Alexander pressed. “A rash move could trigger an automated def

Chapter 147

ABIGAIL'S POVThe warehouse doors slammed shut behind me with a sound that reverberated through my bones.For half a second, I couldn’t breathe.Tristan was in my arms. That was the only thing anchoring me to sanity. His tiny fingers curled into the fabric of my jacket, and when he let out a small, confused whimper, my heart cracked wide open.“I’ve got him,” I whispered into the comm, my voice tight but steady. “He’s in my arms.”“Abigail,” Alexander replied immediately, relief and warning braided together in his tone, “you’re not clear. Thermal signatures just spiked inside the structure. Multiple heat blooms. You’re not alone.”Of course I wasn’t.The cavernous warehouse stretched out before me — dark, hollow, industrial. The faint smell of rust and oil clung to the air. Somewhere water dripped, slow and rhythmic, echoing like a ticking clock. A single overhead lamp flickered to life, buzzing faintly as it cast a cone of harsh white light in the center of the space.Dust swirled th

Chapter 148

ABIGAIL'S POVI didn’t remember deciding to move.One second I was frozen, staring at Tristan suspended over empty air, and the next my body had already chosen for me.The operative holding him shifted his weight again, testing me, measuring my breathing, my balance, my breaking point. I let my shoulders sag slightly, as if defeat had settled into my bones.“Please,” I said softly, my voice trembling just enough to be believable. “You’ve proven your leverage. Put him down. I’ll cooperate.”Behind the mask, I saw the smallest tilt of his head.Out of the corner of my eye, I tracked the other operative on the catwalk — the one lingering near the stairwell. His posture had loosened by a fraction. He thought he had control.Alexander’s voice was a low thread in my ear. “Abigail, I can lock the lower-level access points. Give me a cue.”“On my mark,” I murmured, barely moving my lips.My pulse was steady now. I tried all I could to calm myself so I could focus and get them out of the way.

Chapter 149

ABIGAIL'S POVI didn’t remember deciding.My body moved before my mind could fracture under the weight of the choice.The cable snapped.The catwalk lurched violently. Tristan slipped and I dove.My fingers closed around the back of his blanket just as gravity tried to claim him. The force nearly wrenched my shoulder from its socket. Pain exploded down my arm, white-hot and blinding, but I locked my grip and dragged him toward me with every ounce of strength I had left.The operative holding him lost balance for half a second, just enough.I slammed into him with my shoulder, twisting my body so Tristan was shielded against my chest. The metal grating groaned beneath us. My knees scraped hard against the catwalk as I pulled Tristan fully into my arms.“I’ve got him,” I gasped.The words tore out of me like a prayer.But the threat wasn’t gone.The shadow above landed behind me with a metallic clang.The figure who had descended from the beams wasn’t neutral.He moved with precision, w

Chapter 150

ABIGAIL'S POV “Step aside, Abigail… or he won’t survive this.”Richardson’s voice didn’t echo like The Architect’s had. It didn’t slither through the speakers distorted and theatrical.It came from the shadows to my right. I turned slowly.The dim warehouse lights flickered once, twice — and then he stepped forward into the half-glow spilling from a broken overhead fixture.Richardson.Tristan was not in his arms.But he was close enough to him that I understood immediately — close enough that Richardson could reach him before I could if I made the wrong move.My entire body went rigid.Every emotion I had fought to suppress — rage, betrayal, disbelief — surged violently to the surface. My grip tightened around Tristan instinctively, my arm trembling from strain.“You,” I breathed.Alexander’s voice snapped into my ear, sharp and urgent. “Abigail, he’s testing you. Don’t react emotionally. Don’t give him that.”Testing me.Richardson’s gaze swept over me — assessing, not surprised. A

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