Lahat ng Kabanata ng HER BILLIONAIRE’S SECRET SON.: Kabanata 51 - Kabanata 55

MEGAN'S POVThe silence in the room was so heavy I could hear the blood rushing in my ears. It was a dull, rhythmic thrumming that made it impossible to tell how much time had passed. Minutes? Hours? The fluorescent light above me didn't flicker according to a clock; it just hummed, a constant, irritating reminder that I was trapped in a box where the sun didn't reach.I sat with my back against the brick wall, my knees pulled up to my chin. I was trying to breathe slowly, the way I used to when the bakery got too busy and the orders were backing up, but the air here was different. It felt recycled, like it had been sitting in these lungs for years before it got to mine.Larry. Every time I thought his name, a fresh wave of guilt hit me. I’d been so determined to prove I could do it alone. I’d wanted to show him that I didn’t need his security, his money, or his "nicer pens." And now, because of that pride, I was here. I didn’t even know where "here" was.Then I heard it.It star

MEGAN'S POV The fluorescent light above me flickered with a rhythmic, dying buzz that felt like it was drilling directly into my skull. I didn't know how many hours it had been since the man with the gray eyes had left the room with his silver phone and his cold smiles. All I knew was that the silence was worse than the shouting. The silence meant they were busy doing something else, something to Liam. I sat on the floor, staring at the heavy steel door. My hands were shaking, but I forced them still. I had to be the person I was before the mansions and the emeralds. I had to be the girl who could fix a broken industrial mixer with a paperclip and a prayer. I looked down at the floor. It was mostly bare, but near the corner where the brick met the concrete, I saw a glint of something thin and dark. I scrambled over, my fingernails scraping the grit, and pulled it out. An industrial staple. Thick, heavy-duty, and slightly rusted. It wasn't a lockpick. It wasn't even close

MEGAN'S POVI didn’t go to the police. I didn’t go to the FBI. In this city, the official channels are just another layer of the bureaucracy my father and his associates have been grease-padding for thirty years. If I wanted Megan and Liam back tonight, I couldn’t wait for a warrant to be signed by a judge who probably plays golf with my board members.I was back in the mobile command unit, the air thick with the smell of cold coffee and the hum of high-end servers. Marcus was standing over a tech named Miller, who was bypassing encryption layers like he was tearing through tissue paper."The video was a mistake," I said, staring at the frozen frame of Megan’s face on the monitor. "They thought it would discourage me. They thought I’d be too busy reeling from the 'heartbreak' to look at the plumbing of the file.""They used a triple-bounce proxy," Miller muttered, his eyes reflected in the blue light of the screen. "But they got cocky. They used a proprietary compression algorithm