All Chapters of From Illegitimate To A Zillionaire Heir: Chapter 661
- Chapter 670
802 chapters
CHAPTER 660
The woman’s grin faltered. She had not been expecting that response from him.She looked into the raw, unyielding conviction in his eyes and realized she wasn’t negotiating with a boy playing hero; she was negotiating with the heir to a dynasty that didn’t know how to lose.“The sub-basement,” she whispered, her voice finally losing its edge. “Level Seven. It’s not on the maps. It’s a pressurized chamber behind the main server stack. The Warden calls it the Heart. She might be there, Tedmond. But the only way in is through the Warden’s private lift.”She paused, her amber eyes searching the silver mask as if trying to see the flesh beneath it.“I wasn’t sure you would actually find her here. It’s been years since I last saw Mill. Back then, I didn’t know who she really was. In this place, people are just numbers or shadows. No one knew what she truly looked like… she was kept in the deep dark.”She leaned closer to the glass, her expression turning uncharacteristically soft.“But now
CHAPTER 661
Tedmond’s pulse hammered, but his face remained a mask of stone as the elevator plummeted.He felt the pressure shift in his ears, a stark reminder of how deep the Heart truly sat.As the floor surged beneath his boots, his mind ran through tactical options.‘If the Warden is suffocating her, he loses his Anchor.’The thought rose automatically, the first line of defense. Why kill the one thing keeping his facility stable?But as the descent accelerated, the counter-argument hit like a punch to the gut.The Warden wasn’t stabilizing the facility anymore. He was erasing evidence.If a Washington heir had breached the inner sanctum, the Gilded Cage was compromised. To the Syndicate, a dead legend was safer than a liberated one.“He’s liquidating the asset,” Tedmond hissed, voice echoing in the metallic shaft. “He’d rather lose the Anchor than let me have her.”Lottie had pointed to the reinforced steel door with its golden seal just before the doors closed.“The private lift. But Tedm
CHAPTER 662
Marek’s hand shot out as Tedmond reached the top of the shaft, swinging onto solid floor just as the lift car snapped its final tether and plummeted into the abyss.Tedmond hit hard, coughing up the sweet taste of gas. He ripped off his mask, gasping for the smoke-filled air of the upper levels.“The transport,” Tedmond wheezed, looking at Marek. “Where is it?”“The hangar,” Marek grunted, helping him up. “But they’ve already cleared the roof. If we want to catch them, we have to take the Warden’s personal interceptor.”Tedmond stood, legs shaky but gaze as sharp as a bayonet. He glanced at the book in his hand, then toward the path to the hangar.“Then we take it,” he said. “And we shoot down anything that gets in our way.”The hangar was a cavernous expanse of polished chrome and reinforced steel, echoing with the distant groans of the facility’s dying infrastructure. In the center sat the Warden’s personal interceptor, a sleek, predatory craft that looked more like a shard of obsi
CHAPTER 663
The dates in the logbook didn’t merely align with history; they defied it.Tedmond’s thumb traced the ink on the most recent page. His breath hitched, the cold air of the cockpit suddenly feeling thin. The names scrawled in the Authorized Visitor column weren’t Syndicate officials. They weren’t names he recognized from the Board.The entries were coded, but the handwriting in the margin made his blood run cold. It was the elegant, sharp script of the woman who had taught him how to hold a pen.“Tedmond?” Lottie froze when she saw the color drain from his face. “What is it? Did you find the Board’s signatures?”“No,” Tedmond whispered, his voice sounding as though it came from a great distance. “Look at these signatures, Lottie. They aren’t people coming in to see her.”He turned the book toward her. The signatures under the Exit column for the last five years were all the same: M.W.“Is that the name, Mill Washington?” Lottie breathed, her eyes widening as she scanned the meticulo
CHAPTER 664
The secondary cooling tower was a brutalist spike of concrete and rusted iron, leaning out over the cliffside, isolated from the main facility. It had been designed to vent the Heart’s thermal energy, but as Tedmond, Lottie, and Marek sprinted across the connecting gantry, it was clear the tower was being repurposed for something far darker.The air grew colder, heavy with salt spray from the waves crashing hundreds of feet below.“Albert,” Tedmond barked into his comms. “Status on the tower’s structure.”“Not good, Master Tedmond,” Albert replied, his voice tight. “The Warden has initiated a Scrub protocol. He isn’t just venting gas… he’s triggered the explosive bolts in the foundation. The tower is standing on prayers and gravity alone. You have approximately seven minutes before it shears off the cliff.”“Seven minutes,” Tedmond repeated. He slammed a hand against the heavy blast doors at the base of the tower. It was locked.“Marek,” he commanded.Marek didn’t hesitate. He step
CHAPTER 665
The others nodded in agreement.It was obvious he was being toyed with. At this point, Tedmond had no idea if his mother had ever truly been in the Heart. If she had, they would have found some trace of her, but there was nothing.Only the hollow mockery of an empty tower and a mannequin draped in the memory of a woman.He began to wonder if the Syndicate even knew where she was, or if she had been sent elsewhere, out of their hands entirely. Had they even known her real name? She wasn’t actually called Mill, that was a nickname he had adopted during the long, grueling years of the search, a word to anchor his hope.Then his eyes widened. He was making a mistake, a fundamental tactical error.She had lost her memory; she didn’t even know who she was.Even if the men knew he had come for her, there was no way they could identify her by name. She wouldn’t know she was a Washington, and she certainly couldn’t sign her name as one. To the world, and perhaps to herself, she was blank
CHAPTER 666
Hugo immediately held out his hand. “I—I was just trying to warm it up!” Hugo wailed, cowering as Marek loomed over him.Tedmond ignored the pathetic display, eyes fixed on the terminal Lottie had just bypassed.“Albert,” he snapped into his comms. “The image. Show me exactly who was loaded onto that medical shuttle.”“Uploading the freeze-frame from the sub-hangar camera now, Master Tedmond,” Albert replied.The screen flickered, then resolved into a grainy, high-contrast image. Two women were being hurried toward the shuttle by Enforcers. One wore the uniform of a Syndicate logistics officer… Molly Webb. The other wore a grey, nondescript shift, her face partially obscured by a fall of silver-blonde hair.Tedmond’s breath hitched. For a moment, his tactical shield nearly shattered. That hair.“Wait,” Lottie whispered, leaning closer. “Look at their wrists, Tedmond.”He saw it. In the chaos of the Scrub protocol, the Enforcers had been frantic. One woman had a yellow Asset band
CHAPTER 667
The admission was more chilling than the anger.Thomas swallowed hard as he took in the shift in Tedmond. The desperation was gone, replaced by a cold, calculating resolve that felt far more dangerous.“Get inside,” Thomas muttered, stepping aside. “Albert’s been screaming at my monitors for the last hour. He found something in the Oakhaven intake logs… but he refuses to show it until you’re on the line.”Tedmond stepped into the warmth of the house, the smell of old wood and burnt coffee washing over him. He didn’t reach for a chair or a drink. He went straight to the monitors.“Albert,” Tedmond said evenly. “Tell me you have a visual on the woman they think is Molly Webb.”“I have something better, Master Tedmond,” Albert replied, his voice grim through the speakers. “I have the Oakhaven intake footage. But you need to see this. Someone else was waiting at the gate.”A pause.“Someone who didn’t care about her ID.”Tedmond leaned over the console, eyes narrowing as the grainy Oakh
CHAPTER 668
Thomas stared at them, mouth hanging slightly open. “That is… that is the most strategically vacant reasoning I have ever heard in my professional life. ‘The ground feels honest’? ‘Enjoy the scenery’? You’re going into a Syndicate processing hub, not a Sunday picnic!”Thomas didn’t like what he was hearing. All he wanted to do was make the whole thing easy, and now Ma,rek and Lottie were trying to make it even harder.Tedmond didn’t laugh, but the corner of his eye twitched with the faintest shadow of a smile. He met Thomas’s gaze, the intensity of his stare anchoring the absurdity of the moment.“The air is monitored, Thomas,” Tedmond said evenly. “Every flight plan leaves a signature. But a car… a car is just one of ten thousand vehicles on the highway. We need to stay invisible, until the moment we choose not to be.”“Fine,” Thomas groaned, throwing his hands up. “Go ahead. Take the long way. Drive until your tires melt. I’ll stay here and try to keep the satellites from losing y
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Lottie spent the next few minutes firing off questions, the rapid-fire kind meant to probe, to trip a man’s resolve.She asked about temptation, the long nights on the road, the distance between them. Tedmond answered each one with a clinical, unwavering loyalty that bordered on the sacred. His responses weren’t rehearsed; they were facts, as immutable as the laws of physics.Finally, Lottie stopped. She leaned back, a genuine, softer smile touching her face. “Damn, Tedmond. Your wife sure struck gold. I’m actually looking forward to meeting her someday, just so I can tell her she picked the last honest man left on the planet.”Tedmond’s brow furrowed into a deep, protective frown. “You are not meeting my wife.”“Why not?” Lottie asked, hands sliding to her hips. “I think we’d get along—”“The car is ready!” Thomas’s voice boomed through the intercom, echoing from the basement and shattering the tension. “And if you aren’t down here in sixty seconds, I’m letting the tires out mysel