All Chapters of The CEO's Undercover Heiress : Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Isabella's POV ​The rain had stopped. The morning was bright. It felt like a threat.​I stood in front of the brass doors of the Sterling Tower. The crowd from last night was gone, replaced by a line of black sedans. They looked like beetles.​I checked my phone.​Sterling Tech. -18%​The halt on trading had been lifted ten minutes ago. The market was punishing the vacuum. I had destroyed the silver drive, but I hadn't destroyed the data. The data was still in the Jersey house. It was still on my mother’s server. It was just... inaccessible.​I walked into the lobby.​The security guards didn't ask for my ID. They didn't ask me to wait. They bowed.​I was the wife. I was the trust.​I was the ghost in their machine.​The elevator climbed. The pressure in my ears was a dull thrum. I watched the numbers. 30. 40. 48.​The doors opened on the executive floor.​The air was different here. It was filtered. It was expensive. It smelled of desperation and dry-cleaning.​Liam was standing at

Liam's POV ​The sound of the glass dissolving wasn't a crack; it was a sigh.​A high-frequency vibration had turned the floor-to-ceiling reinforced pane into a curtain of diamonds. It fell in a silent, shimmering wave. The vacuum of the 48th floor did the rest. The air in the boardroom was sucked out into the night, dragging papers, tablets, and the collective breath of the Sterling board with it.​I lunged across the table.​My hand caught the edge of the mahogany. My other arm hooked around Isabella’s waist. She was light. Too light. The wind was a physical hand trying to peel us off the floor.​"Liam!" Sarah’s voice was a thin reed, lost in the roar of the pressure change.​I didn't look at Sarah. I looked at the man on the ledge.​He wasn't a sniper. He was a delivery system. He wore a matte black tactical suit that absorbed the light of the city. He didn't have a weapon. He had a localized sonic emitter strapped to his forearm.​He stepped into the room.​The wind died as the bu

Isabella's POV The glass didn't fall inward; it disintegrated.A high-velocity projectile, likely a non-lethal acoustic round from the lead drone, turned the pane into a cloud of lethal sand. I dove for the floor, shielding the sapphire box with my chest. Beside me, the laptop screen flickered as the wired hardline was severed by the blast. Eleanor’s face vanished into a smear of static."Down!" Liam’s voice was a bark. He shoved the mattress off the frame, creating a makeshift barrier against the open window.I tasted dust. I tasted iron. I looked at the glass slide clutched in my palm. It was a thin sliver of history, stained with a dried, dark crimson smear. Look at the blood."Isabella, the stairs," Liam said. He was already on his feet, his posture low, one hand gripping the edge of the nightstand to steady himself. His injured shoulder was a map of red."The slide," I said, my voice thin. "Liam, if she isn't my mother, then the trust—""The trust is a ghost. We have thirty seco

Isabella's POV The bridge didn't collapse, but my world did.The explosion was a controlled thermal charge, a wall of white heat that severed the bridge’s support cables like silk ribbons. I remember the sensation of weightlessness before the shadowed figure in the white coat shoved me into the back of a waiting transport. The last thing I saw was the black sedan—Liam’s silhouette pinned against the strobe of emergency lights—vanishing into a cloud of gray debris.Now, the air is sterile. It smells of ozone and high-grade bleach.I sit on a stainless-steel stool in a private pathology lab in Midtown. The walls are glass, but they aren't transparent; they are liquid crystal, currently opaque and humming with an anti-surveillance frequency. Across from me, a technician in a lead-lined apron is processing the glass slide I pulled from the sapphire box. Subject 0."Verifying the sample now, Ms. Vane," the technician says. His voice is a monotone, filtered through a surgical mask."It’s n

The light from the boardroom monitor was a clinical, predatory blue. On the screen, Arthur Vane had perfected the architecture of grief. He wore a dark sweater—casual, approachable—the kind of garment that suggested a quiet evening interrupted by tragedy. It was a lie, of course. He was sitting in a studio with three teleprompters and a team of crisis managers refining his every blink."I just want my daughter home," Arthur said. His voice cracked at the precise frequency required to trigger a sympathy rally in the futures market. "Politics and business aside, she is a young woman who has been through unimaginable trauma. The revelations about Eleanor’s… experiments… have devastated our family. Isabella needs care. She needs her father."I stood in the center of the Sterling boardroom, the sapphire box heavy in my palm. Its velvet was worn, a relic of a life that felt like it belonged to someone else. The board members weren't looking at my face; they were staring at my hands, waiting