All Chapters of I Was Framed For A Murder I Didn't Commit : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

​As the freezing, oily water of the harbor filled Vivian Vance’s throat, she didn’t think about her family's lost empire or the millions locked away in frozen bank accounts. She thought about salt. It tasted like old metal. It tasted exactly like the cheap canned soup Marcus Kane had forced her to eat the night before, while he sat across the room eating real meat with the city's new militia leader.​"Marcus..." she gasped, her wet fingers slipping against the rubber edge of the lifeboat. The ocean underneath her was a black, swirling hole. "Marcus, please. Help me. I can't feel my legs."​Marcus didn't move to help her. He stood at the front of the small boat, his expensive rain jacket completely clean despite the storm. In his right hand, he held a heavy, rusted iron wrench.​"Three years, Vivian," Marcus said. He didn't yell, but his voice carried perfectly over the wind. "Three years I played the perfect, loving boyfriend to an orphaned little princess. I listened to you cry. I t

​"Well?" Julian took another step closer, his boots loud on the wet rocks. Before she could even take a step, Julian caught the movement in the shadows. In a flash of terrifyingly fluid speed, he closed the distance between them.​Vivian was slammed backward against the rough brick wall. The impact knocked the breath from her lungs, but it was the sudden, overwhelming proximity of his body that made her vision spin. Julian pinned her there, his large, callused hand coming down right next to her ear, the rough brick scraping his knuckles. He leaned in so close she could feel the intense, radiating heat of his chest pressing against her silk blouse, the scent of rain, expensive tobacco, and raw timber filling her senses.​"Give me one good reason I shouldn't break your neck right here, Vance," Julian growled, his voice a deep, gravelly rasp that vibrated straight through her spine.​His dark eyes burned down into hers, blazing with a dangerous, volatile mix of old hatred and a sudden,

​Julian didn't ask stupid questions. He didn't ask her why she looked like she had just seen a ghost. He simply stepped away from the wooden crate of MREs, his dark eyes tracking the slight tremor in her fingers as she clutched the phone.​"Marcus?" he asked, his voice low.​"He sent his personal security firm to lock down the coastal villa," Vivian said, her words coming fast as she turned and began hurrying up the concrete steps. "But the automated security system is asking for a secondary biometric verification from my penthouse server. He’s driving back to the apartment to pull the hard drives himself."​Julian let out a short, sharp curse, his heavy boots echoing behind her on the concrete. "If he touches that server, he doesn’t just get your family’s money, Vivian. He gets the coordinates to this entire yard. My family’s encryption keys are buried in those files. If he unlocks them, we’re both dead before the storm even starts."​They burst through the heavy metal hatch into the

​The garage was silent, the low hum of the ventilation system the only sound untilVivian reached the matte-black sedan hidden behind the concrete pillar. The passenger door clicked open automatically as she approached.Vivian slid into the seat, pulling her father's flash drive from her pocket and dropping it into the central console.​Julian was leaning back in his seat, his arms crossed over his chest, his dark eyes fixed on her face. He didn't look at the drive; he looked at the slight smudge of dirt on her cheek and the tight line of her mouth.​"You're late by forty seconds," he said, his voice a dry, low drawl. "I was about to use the fire axe."​"The server is completely gone," Vivian said, leaning her head back against the leather headrest, her chest rising and falling as the adrenaline finally began to drain from her system. "Marcus thinks I had a hysterical breakdown and deleted the weather files because I was scared. He doesn't suspect a thing."​Julian didn't smile. He tur

The black sedan tore through the pitch-black streets of the commercial sector, its infrared headlights cutting a thin, ghostly path through the darkness.​The city’s power grid had completely died ten minutes ago. The air coming through the car’s vents smelled heavily of sulfur and scorched copper. Vivian recognized that smell instantly—it was the exact chemical signature of an atmospheric tear—but she kept her mouth shut, watching the barometric sensor on the dashboard climb into the red zone.​"The telemetry on the dash is completely erratic," Julian said, his voice clipped and tight as he drifted the car around a sharp corner. "The air pressure is dropping by three millibars every five minutes. Vivian, your father's research papers notes said the initial storms would be severe, but this is a localized vacuum collapse. It shouldn't be scaling this aggressively."​"The mathematical models always have a margin of error when tectonic friction increases," Vivian explained calmly, hiding