All Chapters of Shhh Daddy won’t Know : Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

​The heat from the burning helicopter was a physical wall, pushing against them with every rhythmic thump of the fuel line's death rattle. The sky above the Vance Foundation was no longer black; it was a bruised orange, choked with embers that swirled like phoenixes in the updraft. Below them, the countdown on the building’s massive external monitors continued its digital march toward zero a crimson neon death sentence visible for miles across the city.​VANCE SECURITY SYSTEM: THERMAL OVERLOAD IN 45 SECONDS.​Marcus Vance stood by the rooftop access door, his expensive suit singed, his eyes glazed with the vacant stare of a man whose god had just jumped off a ledge. He clutched the silver locket with a white-knuckled grip, a relic of a past that had never truly existed.​"She took the codes, Lucas," Marcus repeated, his voice barely a whisper against the roar of the fire. "She always said she’d never let anyone else have it. If she couldn't rule the empire, she’d turn it into a pyre."

​The arrival of the white yacht felt like a final, cruel twist in a narrative that refused to end. Below the limestone cliffs of Isola di Vetro, the vessel sat in the water like a predatory swan, the Vance crest gleaming on its hull with an arrogance that defied the destruction of the Glass House. Julian Vance the man who had been declared dead by every news outlet in the Western world, the man they had seen slumped against the charcoal-stained walls of the nursery was stepping onto the stone dock. He moved with a stiff, pained grace, leaning heavily on a carbon-fiber cane, but the set of his shoulders was unmistakable. He was a king returning to a kingdom he had never intended to abdicate.​"The debt always finds a way to collect," Arthur Cross whispered, his voice trembling with a mixture of terror and weary resignation. He pulled Elena and Lucas back from the edge of the terrace, into the shadow of a concrete pillar. "Thorne didn't bring him here. Julian tracked the 'Dead-Man’s Swi

The trip back to the mainland felt like waking up from a bad dream, only to find your real life was worse. The clean, sharp air of the island was gone, replaced by the damp, heavy fog of Blackwood Valley. It clung to the windows of the armored car like a sick breath. And there, in the distance, the Glass House sat on its cliff. It didn’t shine anymore. In the dying orange light of the sunset, it looked like a broken piece of dirty ice, reflecting nothing but the coming dark.Elena sat in the back, pressed against Lucas. The words from the file Arthur gave them The First Cain burned in her mind. It wasn’t just a story anymore. It was a weight, sitting on her chest, making it hard to breathe."He's here," Lucas said, his voice flat and sure. He was checking a heavy pistol, his hands moving with a calm that scared her. Arthur had given it to him. "Marcus didn't run to his lawyers. He came home. To the only place he ever felt like a god.""The library," Elena whispered, a cold certainty s

The jump from the burnt, silent ruins of Blackwood to the roaring heart of the capital city was like falling from a lonely cliff into a shark tank. Elena and Lucas were ghosts now. The world had written their obituaries. But here they were, breathing the cold, sour air of a city getting ready to crown a king.They stood in the shadow of a monument, watching workers build a grand stage for tomorrow’s show. Senator Sterling’s smiling face was on every screen. But the words “Phase Two” from that laptop in the ruins were a drumbeat in Elena’s head. This wasn’t a rescue mission. They’d been led here. They were mice in a new, bigger maze.“She’s here,” Lucas whispered, his eyes scanning the fortress-like campaign building. His voice was raw. “My mother… she didn’t just survive the fall, or the gas. She is the campaign. She’s been pulling the strings the whole time.”The truth was a sucker punch to the gut. Claire Vance wasn’t a prisoner or a pawn. She was the player who had designed the who

The world had gone quiet, but in a terrible way. The sirens, the shouts from the burning library they felt far away. The only sound that mattered now was the hum. A low, soft buzzing that came from Lucas himself. It vibrated in Elena’s teeth, in the bones of her hand where she held his. In the flickering light of the emergency vehicles, she could see it a faint, golden light pulsing under the skin of his throat, like a firefly trapped just beneath the surface. This wasn’t her Lucas. This was something the Glass House had left behind.Dr. Thorne stepped out of the shadows near the Washington Monument, his tablet glowing. He looked at Lucas not with horror, but with a hungry kind of wonder. “It’s permanent, Elena. You can’t cure this with a pill. He’s not a man with a disease anymore. He’s something new. He’s… connected.”“Fix him!” Elena screamed, tears cutting through the soot on her face. “You did this! There has to be an antidote!”“The antidote is at the source,” Thorne said, his v