All Chapters of THE CEO ALREADY KNEW : Chapter 211 - Chapter 220

227 Chapters

Chapter 211: The Journalist Who Didn't Know When to Stop

The email arrived at 6:47 AM.I knew before I opened it. There's a particular weight to messages that arrive too early—something urgent trying to disguise itself as routine. This one came from an address I didn't recognize, sent to the encrypted account Celeste set up for me after Iceland.Subject line: Daphne Vega. Real name. Real story.I read it standing in the kitchen of our coastal apartment, wearing Celeste's oversized sweater and nothing else, coffee going cold in my hand.Ms. Vega—I've been following the Laurent Axis collapse for eighteen months. The official narrative doesn't account for the woman who disappeared with Celeste Laurent and reappeared six months later in a Mediterranean coastal town under a false name.I'm not here to expose you. I'm here to understand what happened. The real version.I'm in your city for the next 72 hours. Meet me, or I write what I already know.—S. KhalilBelow the signature: a photograph I didn't know existed. Me and Celeste in Reykjavík, m

Chapter 212: The Interview That Changed Everything

She arrived at 8:57 AM.I watched her through the café window—S. Khalil, journalist, potential threat, potential ally. She wore a gray coat and carried the same leather bag as yesterday. Her posture was different now, though. Less guarded. Like she'd already decided something.I'd decided something too.Celeste wasn't with me. We'd agreed on that last night, in the dark, when our voices were quiet enough to be mistaken for breathing. The journalist wanted me. The story lived in my chest, not Celeste's boardroom. If this went wrong, only one of us needed to be exposed."You're early," I said when Khalil sat down."You're later than I expected.""I was deciding whether to disappear.""Clearly you decided not to."I signaled the waiter. Ordered coffee I didn't plan to drink. Khalil set her bag on the empty chair beside her—deliberate, I noticed. Keeping space between us. Smart."I have conditions," I said."Name them.""First: you record everything. No off-the-record side conversations t

Chapter 213: The Architect's First Mistake

The private meeting place Khalil chose was a bookstore.Not a chain—one of those narrow, cramped spaces that smelled of old paper and older secrets. The owner let her use the back room after hours. Wooden tables, mismatched chairs, a single window that looked onto an alley neither too public nor too private.Perfect for a conversation that shouldn't exist.Celeste arrived ten minutes before Khalil. She wore black—unobtrusive, watchful. Her eyes tracked every exit, every shadow, every possible angle of approach. Old habits. The kind that kept people alive."You're pacing," she said."I'm thinking.""You're pacing."I stopped. Leaned against a bookshelf. The spines dug into my back—poetry, mostly, none of it in English. Appropriate. Love and loss didn't need translation."Khalil isn't our enemy," I said."You don't know that.""I know she's scared. I saw it yesterday, when I mentioned the architect. That wasn't journalistic ambition. That was someone who's seen something she can't expla

Chapter 214: The First Strike

The article dropped at 6:00 AM on a Tuesday.Khalil had sent us the final draft the night before. I'd read it three times—once for content, once for accuracy, once to make sure I wasn't in the photograph she'd chosen for the lead image. I wasn't. That photograph belonged to Nadia Khalil, a dead junior analyst, smiling at her sister from the doorway of a life she'd never get to finish.The headline read: The Architect's Shadow: Who Really Built Oracle?By noon, the internet was on fire.I watched from our apartment balcony, phone in hand, scrolling through responses that ranged from furious denial to cautious belief to outright panic. Laurent Axis's former board members released statements condemning the article as "conspiracy fiction." Adrian Wolfe's lawyers threatened defamation suits from prison. Government officials who'd spent months investigating Celeste suddenly went silent.And somewhere out there, the architect was reading every word."You're supposed to be resting."Celeste's

Chapter 215: When the Architect Writes Back

The second article was published on Friday.Khalil titled it The Oracle Files: How a Billion-Dollar AI Was Built on Stolen Lives. She included the training data—not the raw files, but a detailed accounting of what they contained. Medical records. Therapy transcripts. Financial histories. Ten thousand violations wrapped in the language of progress.She also included an affidavit from Celeste, signed and notarized, taking full responsibility for Oracle's creation while naming the architect as the source of the stolen data.I was young. I was manipulated. I was complicit. But I was not the architect of this crime. I was the instrument.The response was immediate.By 9 AM, three separate governments announced investigations. By noon, Celeste's lawyers had filed a motion for immunity in exchange for full cooperation. By 3 PM, someone leaked Celeste's current location to the press.Our apartment address appeared on social media within the hour.---"We need to leave."Hana Seo stood in our

Chapter 216: The Woman Who Knew Too Much

Emilia chose the meeting place.An abandoned fish processing plant on the outskirts of a fishing village two hours from our apartment. The building smelled of salt and rust and something older—decay, maybe, or the ghosts of the men who'd worked there before the industry collapsed.Appropriate, I thought. Ghosts meeting ghosts.Celeste drove. I watched the rearview mirror for tails, my hand resting on the compact pistol Hana had pressed into my palm before we left. The weight was unfamiliar—I'd never been a gun person. Cons required charm, not violence.But charm wouldn't stop a bullet. And the architect had already promised to come for me."She's here," Celeste said, killing the engine.A single light burned inside the processing plant. Through the grime-covered windows, I could see a figure moving—small, quick, unmistakable even in silhouette.Emilia.I'd known her for eight years. Worked with her on four continents. Slept beside her during jobs when there was no one else to trust. S

Chapter 217: The Double Agent's First Night

Emilia left at midnight.We watched her go from the apartment window—a small figure in a dark coat, walking toward the car Hana had arranged. She didn't look back. She never looked back. That was one of the things I'd always admired about her. And one of the things that had always terrified me."She'll be inside Thorne's network by morning," Celeste said. Her reflection in the glass was pale, drawn. "If they believe her cover story.""They will." I turned from the window. "Emilia is the best liar I've ever known. Present company excluded.""Flattering.""I'm not trying to be flattering. I'm trying to be honest." I crossed to the couch. Sat down heavily. The adrenaline from the past forty-eight hours had drained out of me, leaving nothing but exhaustion and a low-grade nausea I couldn't shake. "She's going to get us what we need. But we have to be ready to move when she does."Celeste joined me on the couch. Her hand found mine—an automatic gesture now, the way breathing had become aut

Chapter 218: What Thorne Took From Us

Hana found Mireille at 3:47 PM.She was alive.Those two words—delivered via text, no punctuation, no emotion—sent me collapsing onto the kitchen floor. Celeste caught me halfway down, her arms wrapping around my shoulders, her body shaking with a relief so intense it looked like grief."Alive," I whispered. "She's alive.""The message didn't say anything else." Celeste's voice was hoarse. "No condition. No location. Just alive."I pulled out my phone. Called Hana.She answered on the first ring. "She's at a private clinic in Nice. Her driver is dead. Her bodyguard is critical. Mireille has a concussion and two broken ribs, but she'll recover.""What happened?""Hit-and-run. Except it wasn't an accident. The vehicle that hit them was stolen three hours earlier. No plates. No witnesses. Professional."Celeste took the phone from my hand. "Can we see her?""Not yet. She's unconscious. The doctors want to monitor her for the next 24 hours." Hana paused. "Celeste—they found a note. In Mir

Chapter 219: The Calm Before the Strike

Three days in the farmhouse.Three days of waiting. Three days of watching the valley turn from green to gold to grey as autumn pressed its fingers against the hills. Three days of Celeste pacing the stone floors while Hana coordinated security and Khalil filed a copy from a location she refused to disclose.Three days of Emilia's silence.I tried not to read anything into the silence. Tried to remember that no news was good news—that if Emilia had been discovered, we would know. Thorne would make sure we knew.But the silence pressed against my chest like a physical weight. Every buzz of my phone made my heart stop. Every crackle from the radio in Hana's makeshift command center made me hold my breath."You're going to wear a hole in the floor," Celeste said from the doorway.I looked down. I'd been pacing the kitchen for the past hour, tracing the same path between the stove and the sink."I'm going to wear a hole in my sanity if she doesn't contact us soon."Celeste crossed to me.

Chapter 220: The Geneva Summit

The service entrance was exactly where Emilia said it would be.A grey door set into a grey wall, marked only by a faded sign that read Livraisons. Celeste and I stood in the alley, wearing kitchen uniforms that smelled faintly of bleach. Hana had dropped us off three blocks away, her face a mask of controlled tension behind the wheel.Fifteen minutes, she'd said. If you're not out by then, I'm coming in.I hoped it wouldn't come to that.The door opened. Emilia's face appeared—thinner than I remembered, sharper, but unmistakably hers."You're late," she said."You're early." I stepped inside. Celeste followed. The door closed behind us with a soft click that sounded like the closing of a cell.Emilia led us through a maze of corridors—grey concrete floors, fluorescent lights, the distant clatter of dishes and shouted orders. The kitchen staff moved around us without looking twice. We were invisible. Exactly where we needed to be."The service staircase is ahead," Emilia said quietly.

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