All Chapters of My Father’s Enemy, My Obsession : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

158 Chapters

Chapter eleven – Touch & Threat

The photographer’s hand is still wedged between the elevator doors when Ava’s brain catches up.“Ms. Moretti?” he blurts, eyes wide as the doors stutter back open. He’s young, suit a little too big, press badge swinging from his lanyard. “Elliot Grant, *Business Ledger*. I—sorry—didn’t expect—”His gaze flicks from her face to the illuminated floor number, then to the Kade Dynamics logo etched discreetly on the mirrored panel.Understanding dawns. His pupils dilate.“Oh,” he breathes. “Wow. So it *is* true.”Her pulse spikes.“Is *what* true?” she asks, voice icy.“That you and Kade are—” He gestures vaguely, camera bumping against his chest. “Working together. On Crownline. On… whatever this is. Could we get a comment? Or even just a shot of you in the lobby? Our readers are dying to know—”He steps forward, half into the elevator, and the camera is rising.Ava’s heel jerks back on instinct.A hand closes around her elbow from behind.“Excuse us,” Damian Kade says, appearing at her s

Chapter Twelve – Jealous Bodyguard

Vince Moretti doesn’t read most of his own email. He has assistants for that—layers of them, filtering and summarizing until only the most important items reach his personal inbox. This is why the subject line catches his eye.> SUBJECT: Preliminary Outline – Heritage Consultancy (Crownline / Moretti / Kade)His hand stills on his glass. He opens the attachment. Three names sit side by side in a neat header:> CROWNLINE HERITAGE GROUP > MORETTI DEVELOPMENT > KADE DYNAMICSA thin crack spiders silently down the side of the crystal tumbler. He scrolls. Page three. There it is. > Lead Design Consultant: Ava Moretti.The glass creaks in his grip. Amber liquid beads along the fracture. “Sir?” his assistant ventures from the doorway. “The board is ready for you.”“Five minutes,” Vince says without looking up. “But they—”“I said,” he repeats, softer, more dangerous, “five minutes.”The door clicks shut. Vince leans back in his leather chair, eyes fixed on his daughter’s name be

Chapter Thirteen – First Crack in the Armor

Kade Dynamics feels different at night.By day, it’s all sharp edges and precision—sleek suits, glass walls, and controlled chaos. After dark, the glass reflects more of the city than the people inside it. The building becomes a mirror, and everyone in it looks like a ghost walking along the skyline.Ava tells herself she’s only here because of the work.If she doesn’t sit in this office and fight for every inch of pavement, her father wants to pave over the people who live on it, no one else will.That’s the story she’s sticking to.It’s almost ten when she steps out of the elevator onto the top floor. Most of the building is dark; only a few offices glow with late-shift light. Her flats are silent on the polished floor as she crosses to the now-familiar black glass doors.They slide open on cue.Damian is at his desk, jacketed off, tie loosened, shirt sleeves rolled. There’s a faint line between his brows that wasn’t there this morning. A half-empty mug of coffee sits by his elbow.

Chapter Fourteen – Almost Too Much

For a heartbeat, the world is only his eyes, and her own reflected in them.Her mouth is open. No words come out.Damian watches her, gaze steady, like he’s waiting to see which way she’ll break.Rage. Desire. Fear. All of it.Her pride kicks in first.“Back off,” she forces out, voice rough. “If you want this to stay business, back. Off.”The words hang there, too loud in the quiet office.He doesn’t move at once.Then, deliberately, he pushes off the glass.The warmth of him peels away inch by inch until there’s cool air where his body had almost been.He takes two measured steps back, hands sliding into his pockets, face schooled back to lazy, dangerous calm.Visible restraint.It shouldn’t make her knees weaker.“See?” he says softly. “No contact.”Her heart is pounding so hard it hurts.“This is not a game,” she says.“Nothing about this feels like a game,” he replies. “That’s half the fun.”God, she hates him.God, she doesn’t.“I’m going home,” she says. “I have to pretend to s

Chapter Fifteen – Numbers Don’t Lie

Most people think power lives in glass offices and private jets.Damian knows it lives in spreadsheets.Not the glossy reports the board sees. The ugly back-end ones. The ones with red cells and flags and notations about “unusual movement.”The ones Nolan is currently projecting across the wall of the secure conference room.“Two days,” Nolan says, laser pointer circling a spike in one corner of the chart. “That’s all it took after the Axiom incident. Funds started bleeding out of three of the shell companies connected to the auction network. Quiet transfers, but sloppy enough, I caught them on a routine sweep.”Damian sits at the head of the narrow table, jacket off, sleeves rolled, tie abandoned somewhere between his office and here. His coffee has gone cold again. He hasn’t noticed.“Where to?” he asks.“Offshore accounts in jurisdictions that make my teeth itch,” Nolan replies. “Cayman, Luxembourg, a fun little bank in Malta that just got flagged by half the EU.”He clicks.New gr

Chapter Sixteen – Heat in the Dark

The storm rolls in just after midnight.Thunder rumbles somewhere over the river, low and distant at first, then closer, like the city itself is grumbling. Rain streaks down the glass walls of Kade Dynamics, turning Manhattan into a smear of neon and shadow.Ava tells herself she’s not here because of him.She’s here because of Orchard. Because Vince moved up a demolition hearing by two weeks. Because the council docket shows language that looks suspiciously like rubber-stamped approval.She’s here because every hour she spends in this tower might buy someone out there a little more time.The elevator dings on the top floor.No receptionist. No colleagues. Just the hum of systems in sleep mode and the white noise of rain.The black glass doors to Damian’s office slide open without her touching them.He’s there.Of course he is.Jacket off, tie loosened, shirt sleeves rolled. The dark wood of his desk is littered with files and screens. A single desk lamp throws a warm pool of light ov

Chapter Seventeen – Crossing the Line

There’s a second where Ava thinks he won’t do it.That he’ll hear his own words—*I’d rather be hated by the whole world than let you go*—and stop. That he’ll step back, smooth his shirt, make some cutting remark, and they’ll go back to arguing about zoning variances like nothing happened.He doesn’t.He crushes his mouth back to hers like he’s claiming something he’s been fighting himself over for too long.The kiss is different this time.The first was shock and cover, an act of survival. The second was proximity and almosts. This one is surrender. Intentional. Open.She gives up pretending she doesn’t want it.His hand on her lower back tightens, hauling her in until there’s no space left. Her fingers slide up, tangling in his hair, pulling hard enough to make him grunt. The sound goes straight through her, dark and hot.He walks her backward without breaking the kiss, steering her away from the map-littered table toward the larger, empty plane of his desk. Papers scatter under her

Chapter Eighteen – Suspicion

Sublevel B smells like cold concrete and machine oil.Damian doesn’t mind it.Down here, away from the glass and the choreography of the executive floors, the building shows what it really is: a fortress made of steel and cabling and very expensive silence.The hacker sits handcuffed to a metal chair in a small holding room off the server corridor, hood pulled back now, hair a mess, eyes darting from face to face.Not Cass.A wiry kid, maybe twenty-two, with a hoodie two sizes too big and a nervous swallow that keeps working in his throat.“Name,” Adrian says.“Legally?” the kid mutters. “Or, like, professionally?”Adrian doesn’t blink. “Both.”The kid glances at Damian, who leans against the far wall with his arms crossed, and immediately looks away again.“Dre,” he says. “That’s all. Just Dre.”“Dre,” Damian repeats. “Who hired you?”“No one,” Dre says quickly. “I mean—not directly. I got a bounty listing on a private board. Anonymous drop. They pay in crypto.”“What was the job?” A

Chapter Nineteen – Volatile Chemistry

Ava doesn’t cancel the next meeting.She thinks about it.She wakes the morning after Cass’s confession with a pit in her stomach and a whisper in her ear:*I don’t tolerate liars around me.*She stands in the shower too long, hot water beating against the back of her neck, trying to wash away the guilt that clings to her skin.Cass tried to hack his deepest node.Lot 17 has Damian’s father’s name in it.Someone else is hunting the drive.Ava is walking back into the tower of the man who could destroy them all with a keystroke.By noon, Vince has mentioned a “heritage consultancy” three times in passing, each one a little too casual. Leo has asked her twice if she wants a driver.She says no to both.By seven-thirty p.m., she’s in the back of a black car anyway, watching Kade Dynamics rise up ahead like a blade of night.She’s not sure if she’s going because she’s brave or because she’s a coward.Maybe both.The receptionist doesn’t meet her eyes when she walks through the lobby this

Chapter Twenty – Leo’s Discovery[Part 1]

Leo should feel better.In theory, he’s done his job. The gala schedule is locked. Travel manifests are cross‑checked. Building access lists for the next month are clean.On paper, Ava Moretti is the safest woman in Manhattan.On paper.He sits alone in the Moretti security control room, the glow of a half‑dozen monitors painting his face in cold blue. It’s after midnight; the rest of the team has rotated out. Only the skeleton night shift is on, and they know better than to interrupt him when the door is closed.He should go home. Shower. Sleep. Pretend for a few hours that his life doesn’t revolve around someone else’s heartbeat.Instead, he keys in a code he hasn’t used in months.Anomaly Review Protocol.He started it a long time ago, back when Vince first hired him and hinted that *certain* members of the family had a tendency to disappear when they weren’t supposed to.Back when Ava was still mostly an assignment and not the axis, his day spun around.The script pulls up the las

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