All Chapters of Kiss Me While The World Burns: Chapter 1 - Chapter 5

Fifteen years ago“Dad, does mummy hate us?”Eight-year-old Victoria asked, clutching the white and silver-studded teddy bear designed specifically for her by her father, Damien De Luca. Smiling down at his daughter, whose gray eyes shimmered with innocence, Damien crouched to her height.“Honey, mummy doesn’t hate us, okay? She simply went on a vacation with her friend,” he explained softly, gently smoothing down her blonde hair.Tilting her head to the side, Victoria’s brow furrowed. “But the other day, she said she hates us. Was she lying?”Damien exhaled heavily. How could he explain to a child that her mother meant every word, and that she had already signed the divorce papers? Praying for any kind of interruption, he pulled her into a tight hug instead.Right then, a well-built bodyguard walked up to them, giving Damien a sharp nod.“Honey, father has to go to work now. I promise to get you more diamond-studded teddies when I return, alright?” Damien smiled, gently breaking the

“…An EMP?” Giordano asked, his tone dropping instantly into a deadly serious register. “A localized pulse, or something bigger?”“An apex trigger,” Victoria drawled. She reached back, lazily accepting a thick, matte-black file from Kany before tossing it onto the scarred mahogany desk. “A device compact enough to fit inside a briefcase, but powerful enough to fry the entire power grid and digital defense infrastructure of an entire territory. You build the hardware weaponization; my syndicate handles the deployment.”Giordano frowned, the sudden shift from corporate flirting to cold, geopolitical reality clearing his head instantly. “Do I look like someone who manufactures heavy hardware, Victoria? I own a cybersecurity conglomerate. I don't build weapons of mass disruption.”Victoria chuckled darkly, releasing her brutal grip on his wrist and taking a slow, elegant step back. “Don’t play stupid with me, Salvatore. Two weeks ago, a decommissioned Soviet-era activation matrix went miss

“...we’ve got news on your father’s death.”The cold night air outside Helms Cove hit Victoria like a slap. She didn't gasp or scream. She just stood there by the open door of her car, her silver-gray eyes fixing on Kany."Get in," Victoria said, her voice dropping to a flat, hard whisper.The moment they were inside the armored sedan, Kany handed over a secure flash drive. Victoria plugged it straight into her dashboard terminal. She expected to see a schematic or a financial leak. Instead, pixelated, leaked medical footage filled the screen. It was an underground clinic. Her father was on a gurney, being wheeled into surgery."He wasn't sick, Kany," Victoria murmured, her fingers tightening on the edge of the leather seat."Look at the autopsy file, Boss," Kany whispered, her hands shaking as she pulled up the secondary scans.Victoria stared at the display. There was no charred car metal, no external blast marks. The scans showed a microscopic device that had been surgically implan