All Chapters of THE HEIRESS BEHIND THE MADNESS: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

WrenThe blood on the balcony glass was still wet, running down the pane in long crimson streaks.HE KNOWS WHO YOU REALLY ARE, THORNE.Kaelen stood in front of me, his body tense and alert. The heat between us vanished, replaced by a cold fear that settled deep inside me.He didn’t rush toward the window. He moved quietly, reaching into his jacket as his broad shoulders shielded me. Then he slid the heavy bolt into place.“Stay behind me,” he said, his voice low and dangerous.“Kaelen…” My voice was barely a whisper. I reached for his shirt, gripping the fabric near his waist. I could feel his heart pounding beneath my fingers.“The warning isn’t for me,” I whispered. “It’s for you.”He didn’t answer.He pulled the heavy curtains shut, hiding the bloody message from view, then turned toward me. The silver in his eyes looked like cold steel, but beneath it, I saw something raw.“Julian doesn’t have the brains for this,” he muttered. His thumb brushed a loose strand of hair from my che

Dr. Kaelen Thorne-VaneThe red emergency strobes pulsed against the wood-paneled walls, painting the room in rhythmic flashes while the house sirens screamed. Below us, the front doors buckled under heavy iron rams. Glass shattered somewhere in the east wing, and tactical boots pounded up the marble staircase in synchronized thunder.“Move!” I bellowed, my voice cutting through the ringing alarms.I didn’t grab the ledger. I didn’t reach for my medical kit. I lunged forward, wrapping one arm around Wren’s waist and pulling her behind me as I shoved past Beatrix. My shoulder slammed against the heavy oak door frame just as Lyra screamed.The tactical officers rounded the landing, their high-lumen weapon lights slicing through the dark hall.“Metropolitan Police! Nobody move! Hands where we can see them!”Beatrix didn’t flinch. She stood in the center of the storm, both hands resting calmly on her ivory cane as blue strobes bathed her silver chignon. She looked back at me over her shoul

Dr. Kaelen Thorne-VaneThe gunshot echoed through the stone corridors like a crack of thunder, the sharp metallic smell of cordite cutting through the damp air.My heart didn’t just leap into my throat. It stopped.“Wren!” I roared.I didn’t care about the guards scrambling through the dark foyer or the faint siren wailing from the distant gatehouse. Every instinct I possessed every brutal impulse inherited from a bloodline of men who had fought to the death took control.I charged into the dark frame of Julian’s office just in time to see his shadow dragging Wren toward the narrow archway behind the mahogany desk. His right arm was wrapped around her neck, while his left hand pressed the heavy revolver against her jaw.Wren’s sapphire eyes found mine in the dim, flickering candlelight. They were wide with adrenaline, but there was no surrender in them. Her body strained against Julian’s grip with terrifying determination.Julian saw me.His bloodshot eyes widened with frantic excitem

Dr. Kaelen Thorne-VaneA violent surge of electricity tore through the manor’s dead wiring.Overhead, the high-voltage emergency floodlights flickered, hummed, and suddenly burst into blinding white light throughout Ashford Manor.The darkness that had protected us in the narrow passage vanished instantly.“The main power,” Wren gasped against my neck, her lungs still fighting the lingering effects of the chloral hydrate. Her small hands clutched the lapels of my coat, her fingers digging through the damp wool into my chest.“Hold onto me,” I rasped.My voice was a dark rumble against her temple.Then I heard it.Heavy footsteps echoed through the main gallery.Clack-drag.Clack-drag.Julian.He was coming back, driven by fear, rage, and whatever stimulants were still keeping his cowardly heart beating.In his right hand, the steel barrel of his revolver scraped along the high oak paneling with a sickening metallic screech.“Wren!”Julian’s voice cracked across the gallery.“I know yo

Dr. Kaelen Thorne-VaneThe red lockdown alarm sliced through the subterranean air, turning the room into shadow and crimson.Clack-thunk.The metallic lock behind us wasn’t just engaged; it was sealed. We were trapped in a concrete vault beneath Mayfair, surrounded by ozone and chilled server fluid.Above us, on the narrow iron catwalk, a silhouette stood framed against the terminal’s glow. The long barrel of an anti-material sniper rifle pointed straight at my chest.“Don’t move, Kael,” a voice rasped from the shadows. It wasn’t Julian. It wasn’t Beatrix. It was a voice I’d buried three years ago.Vane’s former chief of security, a man who had sold out my father’s memory for a seat at ALPHA-00-ZERO’s table. “One breath, and I put a three-hundred-grain round through your sternum. The girl stays alive. You don’t.”My hand twitched toward the Sig Sauer beneath my coat. Every instinct screamed at me to fire. But the angle was impossible. The distance was forty feet. If I moved, he’d ki