All Chapters of From Illegitimate To A Zillionaire Heir: Chapter 641
- Chapter 650
802 chapters
CHAPTER 640
Tedmond studied the door, brows furrowing.The lock, a heavy biometric mag-lock, looked more suited for a vault than a kitchen entrance.Its cold, clinical surface reflected a flash of his own face for a moment.He glanced at his rough, calloused knuckles, then back at the high-tech mechanism.Five years ago, he might have waited for a locksmith or searched for a key.Now, his first thought was brute force: how many pounds of pressure to rip the frame from the stone, or where the wiring hid behind the plate so he could short it with a blade.He wasn’t just a scholar anymore; every object in the world was either a tool or an obstacle.‘Is she behind a lock like this?’ The thought hit his gut with a sharp pang of anticipation. ‘Does she hear the wind out here? Does she know I’m standing on the other side of the wall?’He pushed the feeling down. Thinking too much made you slow. Slow got you dead."Thomas," Tedmond whispered, low and controlled. "The lock, it’s a Grade 5 biometric. Can
CHAPTER 641
Marek’s grin turned sharp and jagged as his hand openly gripped the hilt of his blade.“Now that is a plan I can follow,” he rumbled, voice thick with dark satisfaction. “After you, Young Master.”Inside, relief surged through him.For hours, Thomas’s cautious logistics and Albert’s digital hand-holding had felt like wearing a suit two sizes too small. To Marek, safety was secondary; effectiveness was everything. He’d been waiting for Tedmond to stop playing the obedient student and start acting like the predator he’d trained him to be.The safe route was for men who feared the dark. This raw, improvised chaos was where real power was tested. He was glad the boy had finally stopped listening to the voices in his ear and started listening to the pulse in his veins.Tedmond paused, gaze shifting to Marek. He noticed the change immediately: the loosened shoulders, the lethal joy dancing in the older man’s eyes. Not for the first time, he wondered how many risks Marek had taken to gr
CHAPTER 642
Tedmond peered at Marek.Though Marek was a formidable fighter, he had always preferred force over finesse, and it had worked for him more times than he could count.“I suggest using the head you spent five years training,” Tedmond replied, his voice cold and sharp.While Marek focused on the physical barrier, Tedmond’s eyes traced the faint thermal signatures lingering on the keypad. His mind honed by years of analyzing complex systems and patterns saw the code before he ever touched the panel.Without his earpiece, without Thomas whispering the sequence in his ear, he relied on instinct.His fingers, rough yet astonishingly precise, moved with mechanical speed.He didn’t kick; he manipulated.A thin needle tool from his belt shorted the proximity loop, and he entered the four-digit sequence, guided only by the heat signatures.With a soft, melodic chime, the seal hissed open.Tedmond looked at Marek, expression flat.“Brute force is for the climb. Intelligence is for the kill. Let’
CHAPTER 643
The ballroom was a sea of masks, each one a lie.Tedmond moved through the crowd with a practiced elegance he hadn’t used in years, his tall frame cutting through the neon fog. He didn’t look like a man who had just scaled a mountain; he looked like a man who owned it.Beside him, Marek was a brooding shadow. Every time a waiter passed with a tray of crystal flutes, Marek’s eyes flicked to the man’s throat, finding an artery before dropping to the drinks.“Relax,” Tedmond breathed, barely audible over the swelling orchestra. “You’re looking for a fight. I need you to look for a conversation.”“Hard to do when my ‘bespoke ensemble’ smells like a midlife crisis and expensive soap,” Marek muttered, the leather bone-mask tilting toward a cluster of men at the center of the room. “See the far pillar? The guy in the gold lion mask. He’s checked his watch every thirty seconds. He’s waiting for a handoff.”Tedmond didn’t look immediately.He accepted a flute of champagne from a passing tray
CHAPTER 644
Tedmond’s eyes fell on the man in the jade mask, noting the way his hand subtly shifted toward the inside of his tuxedo jacket.‘Probably a weapon, Tedmond thought, his gaze narrowing.If anything went wrong, the attack would be immediate. And it wasn’t just the jade mask watching him now; the others had turned as well, their eyes dark behind their masks.‘Think, Tedmond. If you can’t sound like them, act like someone they’re afraid to question.’“I didn’t,” Tedmond finally replied, leaning into the silence with chilling, low-volume intensity.He didn’t try to mimic their accents anymore; he let his own voice become sharp and surgical.“And the fact that you’re asking tells me the security protocols for this evening are even more compromised than I feared.”He shifted his gaze to the onyx mask, deliberately ignoring the jade mask’s growing hostility.“I’m here because the London interests, as you so quaintly refer to the board, are tired of hearing rumors about functional trauma from
CHAPTER 645
The Adjutant’s grip on the tablet tightened until his knuckles turned white.As he listened to Tedmond, his eyes tracked him from head to toe, searching for familiarity in the cut of the suit, the quality of the fabric, the subtle tells of belonging.There were none.He couldn’t place him, couldn’t place the voice, the posture, the confidence.And yet, from the way Tedmond spoke, the Adjutant was certain of two things: Tedmond was not one of them… and he was far from ordinary.‘He mentioned Washington, the man thought uneasily. ‘Is he part of that family?’“The network is isolated!” the Adjutant finally snapped. “We switched to physical tablets specifically to avoid—”“Because you’re afraid,” Tedmond cut in smoothly.“But physical tablets leave physical fingerprints. Do you really want to be the man who handed the keys to the Gilded Cage to a ghost because you were too proud to let a specialist verify the encryption?”The Adjutant hesitated.His eyes flicked to the tablet, then back t
CHAPTER 646
CLICK.The sound was small, but in the cold silence of the conservatory, it carried the weight of a death sentence.It was the unmistakable mechanical snap of a hammer being drawn back on a semi-automatic, a sound Tedmond had heard a thousand times in training, but never with his own life balanced so precisely on its edge.Tedmond froze.Every muscle in his body locked into rigid, vibrating tension.How?The question screamed through his mind, louder than the rushing water of the fountain.He was a Washington. He had been trained by Marek, the finest hunter the Syndicate had ever produced. For five years, he had lived in a world where the snap of a twig or the shift of a shadow triggered a lethal response. He had crossed the cliffside, the ballroom, and the VIP lounge with the instincts of a predator.Yet he hadn’t heard a footfall.Hadn’t felt the displacement of air.No perfume.No rustle of silk.No measured breath.It was as if the person behind him had condensed out of the humi
CHAPTER 647
Tedmond didn’t wait for her to finish.He knew the physics of a stationary shooter: the moment of greatest vulnerability came just after the end of a sentence.In one explosive motion, Tedmond hurled himself backward, using the weight of his sodden velvet coat to slam into her while simultaneously diving toward the churning water of the fountain. It was a gamble measured in milliseconds.He heard the splash.Felt the cold shock of the water.But he didn’t hear a gunshot.Instead, as he rolled through the waist-deep basin and scrambled to his feet, water cascading from his silver mask, he found himself staring down not one, but two barrels.The woman had stepped back with a dancer’s grace. Her primary weapon remained leveled at his chest, while her left hand had drawn a compact suppressed pistol from a thigh holster, aimed precisely at the spot where Marek had been crouching.“I said,” she repeated, her voice stripped of all amusement, “don’t move.”Tedmond stood dripping, the weight
CHAPTER 648
The warehouse was a cavern of humming servers and flickering monitors, but the high-tech glow did little to warm the atmosphere.Thomas sat on the edge of a reinforced crate, his hands trembling so violently that the tablet he held rattled against his knees.“We have to call him. Albert, patch me through. Now!” Thomas’s voice was strained, cracking with an anxiety that bordered on physical pain. He looked less like a seasoned operative and more like a man watching a slow-motion disaster.“He’s been in there too long without a status update. If the Syndicate catches him, they won’t just kill him. They’ll—”“Thomas, breathe,” Albert said without looking up from his keyboard.His fingers danced across the keys, his face illuminated by a waterfall of green code.“I can’t patch you through. Even if I wanted to.”Thomas stood, pacing the tight radius of the workstation.“Why not? The signal was strong ten minutes ago! Did they jam him? Did they find the frequency?”“No,” Albert said, final
CHAPTER 649
Outside, the moon was a silver sliver, the wind howling against the reinforced panes.Then Marek’s eyes dropped to the fountain’s base.Water overflowed, slicking the marble beneath the Commander’s high-end tactical boots.Marek reached into a hidden pocket of his crimson cloak and withdrew a small, weighted glass sphere, a flash-bang of a different variety filled with a concentrated, pressurized gas that reacted violently with water.‘Wait for it,’ he told himself. ‘Wait for the boy to make his move.’He saw Tedmond’s posture shift.Saw the way the kid used his voice as a distraction, drawing the woman’s focus into a psychological game.Tedmond was playing the “London consultant” card again, probing for her price.Marek adjusted his grip. He wasn’t worried about the automated turrets the woman had mentioned.He knew where they were… three heat-sensitive units mounted in the cornices. He had already mapped their blind spots.His concern was the Commander’s left hand.The one aimed at