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Home / Romance / The Hostile Takeover: Signed, Sealed, and Claimed / Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

All Chapters of The Hostile Takeover: Signed, Sealed, and Claimed: Chapter 51 - Chapter 60

62 Chapters

51

"How much is it?"I didn't turn around. I kept my eyes on the digital ledger projected against the reinforced glass of the penthouse. The numbers were long. Meaningless. Rows of zeros that moved like a slow-moving river of ink."In liquid assets? Or including the real estate holdings in Tokyo?" Caleb’s voice came from the doorway."The total. Everything we took from Abigail.""More than the GDP of Germany." The floorboards didn't even creak as he walked toward me. "We own the lithium. We own the satellites. We own the debt of three major governments.""We won." I looked at my hands. They were human. Pale. The knuckles were still bruised from the boardroom floor. I traced the faint, iridescent scars on my palms—marks left by the silver virus. They shimmered under the office lights. "Why does it feel like I’m sitting in a coffin?""Because you haven't slept in forty-eight hours." Caleb reached into the ice bucket on the side table. He pulled out a bottle of vintage champagne. The cork p

52

"Is he dead yet?"Caleb’s voice was a rasp, sharp enough to cut the ozone-heavy air in the penthouse. I didn't look up from the terminal. My eyes burned. My skin was a roadmap of sweat and dried blood."My father doesn't die, Caleb. He just rebrands." I swiped a trembling hand across the glass screen. A thousand financial records scrolled past. "He’s been hiding in the ledgers for twenty years. Every bribe. Every merger. Every 'accidental' death. It’s all here.""The satellites are positioning." Caleb stepped closer. His psychic link was a frantic hammer against the back of my skull. "We have forty minutes before the Panopticon hits the zenith over the Atlantic. If you don't find the switch, the world wakes up different.""I’m looking!" I slammed my fist into the mahogany desk. The wood splintered. "He buried it in a maintenance fee. Four cents a transaction for ten years. Disguised as server cooling for Brooks Global.""Four cents?" Caleb leaned over my shoulder. He smelled like gunp

53

"He’s not breathing, Ethan."Abigail Moore’s voice was a flat, metallic rasp. I didn't look at her. I didn't look at the tactical gear she was wearing or the silver-tipped spear in her hand. I only looked at Caleb.He lay on the silk carpet, his body a twisted wreck of grey skin and black veins. His eyes were open. Fixed. The gold was gone, replaced by a dull, human brown that reflected the red emergency lights of the penthouse."Caleb!" I slammed my palms against his chest.Ribs cracked. I didn't care. I pushed my Alpha energy into the palms of my hands, trying to force a spark into a system that had been flatlined by the signal. Through our frayed psychic link, I caught a single, static-filled image: the two of us in the mountain snow. Then, silence. Cold. Absolute."The signal was a culling protocol, Ethan." Abigail stepped over the shattered glass of the window. She didn't look at the body. She looked at the city below. "Your father didn't just want to create new wolves. He wanted

54

Don't kill me yet."Abigail Moore pressed her back against the rusted subway tile. Her charcoal suit was a rag. Red soaked through the silk on her shoulder. Behind her, three kids crouched in the dark. Their eyes were too wide. Too yellow. One of them had fur sprouting in patches along his jaw."Give me one reason." I adjusted the webbing across my chest.Caleb’s weight shifted. His head lolled against my neck. His skin was the color of a wet sidewalk. Cold. So cold I couldn't feel his pulse through my shirt."Because the drilling started ten minutes ago." Abigail pointed a shaking finger at the ceiling.The vibration hit my feet. A low, rhythmic thrumming that made the rats in the tunnel shriek and scatter. David’s team. They weren't coming for survivors. They were coming to gut the mountain."I have the map to Sub-Level Zero." Abigail reached into her pocket. She pulled out a cracked tablet. The screen flickered with a blueprint of the Brooks Global vault. "But look at the gate, Eth

55

Sign the contract, son."My father’s voice drifted through the nanite mist like a funeral dirge. He didn’t look seventy. He didn’t even look forty. He sat in that leather chair with the same sharp jaw and predatory eyes from the 1998 portraits, his skin tight and glowing with a faint, unnatural health. The 'Immortal Alpha' strain. He’d been drinking the future while we were bleeding for it."He's not a contract." I stepped over the threshold, my boots crunching on discarded silicon chips. "He’s my mate.""He was your mate." David Brooks stood up. His suit was perfect. Not a single crease. "Now, he’s the Universal Beta. Look at the shimmer, Ethan. That’s not death. That’s a rewrite."I looked down. Caleb’s skin was humming. The grey translucent pallor was gone, replaced by an iridescent violet light that pulsed beneath his flesh like a neon heart. His fingers twitched. Not the twitch of a man waking up, but the rhythmic, mechanical movement of a machine booting up."You turned him into

56

I’m not signing shit."My claws didn't rip into Caleb’s chest. They didn’t draw the violet blood pulsing under his skin. I dragged them across the DNA scanner instead. Sparks showered my boots. The machine screamed."You’re destroying the link!" My father lunged. His face twisted. The mask of the ageless Alpha cracked. "The hybrids—the world—you’re leaving them in the dark!""I’m leaving them to themselves." I grabbed Caleb’s hand.The violet light wasn't a data stream anymore. It was a furnace. I stopped trying to hold the power. I stopped trying to be the Architect. I pushed every ounce of my Alpha energy—the greed, the ego, the Brooks legacy—into the bond. I didn't want to rule. I wanted him back."Ethan?" Caleb’s voice was a rasp. A human sound.His eyes snapped open. The solid violet bled away, leaving pupils that actually saw me. He sat up. The leather straps holding him to the dais didn't just break; they disintegrated. He moved with a grace that wasn't wolf or man. It was some

57

What did you call me?"The word hung in the cold mountain air like a gunshot. I gripped Caleb’s shoulder. My knuckles were white. The toddler looked up at me with those silver eyes—my eyes—and didn't blink. He stood in the center of the ash, his skin flawless, his small chest rising and falling with a steady, rhythmic heat."Dad." He said it again. The voice was too clear. Too old."Ethan, his scent." Caleb’s hand was trembling against mine. He leaned in, his nose brushing my neck as he took a sharp, jagged breath. "It's not just yours. It’s... it’s hers.""Whose?" I barked.I looked at the man in the grey suit. He stood perfectly still. The Caleb-double. The 1999 Ledger. He wasn't breathing. He wasn't a man. He was a projection of the vault’s final protocol."The surrogate you selected in 2024," the grey suit said. He adjusted his charcoal tie. "The one you thought you’d terminated. Abigail Moore didn't just save hybrid children, Ethan. She saved the Brooks heir.""Abigail?" My stoma

58

"You missed one."I didn't look up. I pushed the pile of silver-tipped bullets toward him. They rolled across the mahogany, clicking against the grain. Caleb stared at them. His throat moved, a slow swallow."There were five in the vent," he said. He didn't touch them. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets. "I found four.""Then one’s still in the wall." I leaned back. The chair groaned. It was the only thing in the lobby that didn't smell like rot. "Or it’s in the target.""We’re the targets, Ethan."Caleb walked to the window. The skyline was a jagged set of broken teeth against a bruised sky. Three stories below, the first campfire of the night was burning. It didn't smell like woodsmoke. It smelled like burning upholstery."They aren't just hunting hybrids," Caleb said. He turned, his face washed out by the orange flicker from the street. "They’re liquidating the founders. They want the Ledger, not the reconstruction.""Let them come." I grabbed a bullet. The weight was famili

59

"Duck!"I tackled the boy. We hit the dirt together. The world turned into a blinding white scream.The blast didn't just rattle the teeth in my head. It shredded the darkness. A wave of heat rolled over us, smelling of ozone and ionized silver. I rolled onto my back. My lungs were full of dust. I coughed, spitting out a thick, grey glob of phlegm."Ethan!" Caleb’s voice was distant. Muffled. Like he was shouting through a mattress.I looked up. The stairs were gone. The ceiling of the basement was a jagged hole. Debris rained down—chunks of concrete, twisted rebar, and scraps of tactical gear.The boy was already standing.He didn't have a scratch. His silver eyes were focused on the gaping hole above. The steel shard in his hand was glowing. Not violet. Not gold. A pure, cold white."The detonator was linked to my pulse, Dad." The kid didn't look at me. He didn't look like a child anymore. He looked like an apex predator in a small frame. "They tried to take me. I gave them the end

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"Sign the papers, Ethan. Before the harvest starts."The man in the pod stepped onto the marble floor. His bare feet made no sound. He didn't just have my face. He had my scars. The one on his chin from the hockey skate in '08. The jagged white line across his knuckles from the night I met Caleb. He looked like me, but he moved like a machine—perfect, balanced, and utterly dead behind the eyes."Who the fuck are you?" My grip on the rifle tightened. My palms were slick with sweat."I’m the 1999 Ledger," the man said. His voice was a flat, digital echo of my own. "The final iteration. The board realized that a human Alpha was too volatile. A hybrid Alpha was too emotional. So they built a synthesis. Data and bone.""You're a clone." Caleb stepped in front of the boy. His hand was on the hilt of his blade. "A biological backup.""I am the upgrade." The double looked at the boy. "The child is the battery. I am the processor. Together, we stabilize the Ark. You are just the biological was

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