جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 60

The elevator doors hissed shut as Julian and I rode down to the main security floor. My mind was racing, connecting every piece of information we had gathered over the past few months. Lord Sterling had never mentioned having a daughter, and there was zero record of a Victoria Sterling in any of the corporate registries I had decrypted.“She was wiped from the family records fifteen years ago,” Julian explained quickly, checking his phone as he sent emergency commands to our private security detail. “The story was that she was banished overseas after a violent disagreement over the company's direction. Everyone assumed she was dead or living under a fake name in Europe.”“She wasn't dead,” I said, pulling up her recent digital footprint on my device. “She was building her own private syndicate across the overseas markets. She let her father take the heat for Marcus’s failure, waiting for the exact moment when the old council collapsed so she could step in and claim everything.”“She’s

The maintenance shaft was narrow, cold, and dark, smelling strongly of old metal and damp concrete. I climbed up the iron rungs as fast as my arms and legs could move, carrying the encrypted tablet slung over my shoulder. Below me, the echoes of boots slamming against the vault floor told me that Victoria’s men had breached the room. They were shouting orders in sharp, military terms, realizing that the data servers were completely locked out.“Check the emergency exits!” a harsh voice bellowed from the bottom of the shaft.A flash of flashlight beams swept up the narrow metal ladder behind me. I didn't look down. I pushed myself harder, reaching the third-floor maintenance hatch. I grabbed the manual latch, turned it with all my strength, and shoved the hatch door open, scrambling out into a narrow service corridor behind the building's main HVAC system.I slammed the hatch shut, locking it from the outside using a heavy steel pipe I pulled from a nearby shelf. Breathing heavily, I t

The standard tactical vehicle purred smoothly as it ate up the miles of open highway, leaving the skyline of Vance City far behind us. Inside the cabin, the heavy silence was broken only by the low hum of the secure communications radio and the steady rhythm of Julian’s breathing beside me. He held my hand tightly, his thumb tracing soft, reassuring circles against my knuckles.I leaned my head back against the headrest, looking out the tinted window at the passing trees. My body was still thrumming with leftover adrenaline from the face-off in the garage. Victoria Vance was not just a competitor; she was a brilliant, dangerous mastermind who had almost destroyed everything we built with a single press of a button. If my quick rewrite of the Sector Four protocols hadn't held up, the eastern district would currently be sitting in pitch-black darkness, and our empire would be in complete ruins."You're thinking too hard," Julian said softly. His voice was low and calm, acting like an an

Blackout complete Rivera's voice shouted over the radio. "Perimeter dark! All lights out!"The whole underground garage went black in one second. The only light left was the green glow from my monitors - the ghost accounts still open on the screen.Julian pulled me away from the desk, his hand tight around my wrist. His gun was already up.Marcus, visual! Julian barked.Marcus was at the security wall, flipping thermal cameras on. Four white heat signatures - SUVs - were cutting through the pine forest road, no headlights, moving fast.They are not stopping at the outer gate," Marcus said, his voice low. "They are coming straight for the bunker door.My heart was beating hard. "Victoria?""Or the directors came early," Julian said. But his jaw was tight. He didn't believe it.On the thermal screen, the first SUV stopped right at the steel gate. The door opened. A tall man stepped out in a heavy coat.Marcus zoomed in. The facial scan blinked red, then green.It's Director Zhao," Marcu

The central control room was dark. Only the big holographic map was glowing.Three red dots on the map.One dot was our drone - small, fast, moving east. It had the silver drive on its belly, still blinking.Two bigger dots were the black Hawks. They were chasing it like hungry dogs. They were close now, only half a mile behind the drone.I was holding my breath. My hand was tight in Julian's hand. His palm was sweaty too, but his face was stone.Marcus was standing by the screen, holding the remote detonator. His thumb was shaking over the button. He had already placed four kilos of C4 at the quarry mouth ten minutes before we even knew about the tracker. We put it there last month to block the road if police ever came. Now we were going to use it for Victoria."Drone is over the quarry," Rivera said over the radio. His voice was low. "Altitude 200 feet. Dropping now."On the screen, our small dot stopped over the big black hole that was the quarry. Then it started to go down, down i