All Chapters of The Disgraced Husband Is the Septamillionaire Heir: Chapter 211
- Chapter 220
307 chapters
CHAPTER 154
Lorenzo shook him off. His hands were trembling. "He dodged them. He dodged the bullets.""What?""He dodged the bullets!" Lorenzo's voice cracked on the last word. "Nobody can do that! Nobody!"The guard looked at Carden, then back at Lorenzo, and the fear in the guard's face doubled. He released Lorenzo's arm and stumbled backward until his shoulders hit the wall.Carden closed half the distance to the table. Then three quarters. The guards had stopped shooting. Not because they wanted to.Because their hands had gone numb and their fingers wouldn't pull the triggers anymore.They stood frozen, watching him approach, and the looks on their faces were the looks of men staring at something that had walked out of a nightmare and kept walking.Lorenzo's breathing came in short, rapid gasps. His chest heaved.His eyes tracked every step Carden took, and with each step, Lorenzo saw more clearly what he had done wrong.Not tactically. Not strategically. Fundamentally. He had tried to kill
CHAPTER 155
The guards didn't move at first. They stood in their positions, weapons still raised, but their hands had gone slack. Their eyes were fixed on Carden, and what lived in those eyes was something between disbelief and the first roots of genuine fear.One of them, a man with a scar running from his left temple to his jaw, lowered his weapon slightly."Did you see that?" he said to the man beside him, his voice barely above a whisper."See what? I couldn't see anything. There was too much smoke.""Exactly. That's the point. There was so much smoke and so many bullets flying, and he walked through all of it like he was taking a stroll through the park."Lorenzo saw the hesitation spreading through his men like a contagion. He saw the weapons drooping, saw the disbelief replacing the professional focus that had been there moments before. And he lost whatever remained of his composure."What are you doing?" he screamed, his voice cracking with desperation. "Shoot him! Shoot him now! All of y
CHAPTER 156
Panic rippled through the remaining guards like electricity through water. Their shooting became wilder, more desperate, almost random. Bullets chewed into the concrete walls, shattered the remnants of the monitors, punched through the overturned furniture. But Carden was no longer there to receive any of them.He was moving.He built momentum with a sprint that took him from one side of the room to the other in four strides. Then he launched himself into the air. His body rotated, his foot came up, and he caught the first guard across the temple with a spinning heel kick that lifted the man off his feet and sent him crashing into the second guard.Both men went down.Carden landed, pivoted, and was already moving toward the third guard before the first two had stopped sliding across the concrete. The third guard tried to swing his weapon toward Carden, but Carden was inside his reach before he could aim. Carden took the gun barrel in one hand, twisted it away, and used the momentum t
CHAPTER 157
Lorenzo's breath came in ragged gasps. His mind raced, calculating angles, distances, the precise moment when Carden's focus would shift just enough to give him an opening. His hand slipped into his jacket, fingers closing around the handle of his backup weapon, but he knew without firing a single shot that bullets were no longer an option.He needed something else. Something unexpected."You think you've won?" Lorenzo's voice was rough, desperate, but he forced it to carry defiance. "You think killing a few of my men means anything? My father controls more than you could imagine. My father is Jerry Stone, and he will hunt you until you're begging for death!"Carden's expression didn't change. That flat, emotionless calm was somehow worse than anger would have been.Lorenzo made his move. He dropped low, feinted left, and drove his body forward in what he calculated as a tackle. His shoulder aimed for Carden's midsection. His hands reached for whatever grip he could find.The moment h
CHAPTER 158
The blade missed by less than an inch.Lorenzo's arm had committed fully to the thrust, every ounce of his remaining strength driving the knife toward Carden's thigh. But Carden shifted his leg. Not dramatically.Not with any flourish or announcement. Just a precise, minimal movement, a lateral rotation of his hip that relocated his thigh exactly two inches to the left, and the blade sliced through empty air and grazed the outer seam of his pants without touching skin.Lorenzo stumbled forward from his own momentum. His knee hit the concrete. The knife clattered from his fingers and skidded three feet across the floor.He stayed on his knees, breathing hard, staring at the blade lying out of reach, and the grin that had been on his face thirty seconds ago was completely gone. In its place was the expression of a man standing at the edge of a cliff he had just realized he could not climb back from.Carden looked down at him. Not with anger. Not with contempt. With the detached patience
CHAPTER 159
Something shifted in Carden's eyes. Not panic. Not fear. Something quieter and far more dangerous, like a temperature drop before a storm. It was there for two seconds, maybe three, and then it was gone. Replaced by the same cold, flat composure that had been there since the moment he'd walked through that steel door.He crouched down in front of Lorenzo. His knees bent, his body lowered until their faces were level, and he looked at the man with eyes that gave away absolutely nothing.His hand reached forward and closed around the hilt of the fallen dagger. He lifted it from the concrete, turned it once in his grip, and slipped it into his own jacket without looking at it."Last trick?" Carden said quietly.Lorenzo said nothing.Carden straightened and turned toward Sebastian, who had already risen from the chair, his face tight with something beyond pain."Carden." Sebastian's voice carried a weight that made the other man turn immediately. Sebastian wasn't a person who used that to
CHAPTER 160
Carden stopped walking.Not because Sebastian's words had surprised him. Not because fear had suddenly taken root in his chest and locked his legs. He stopped because he had reached the door, placed his hand against the steel, and decided there was something he needed to address before they left this room.He turned around."No cause for alarm," he said.Sebastian stared at him. "Did you just tell me there's no cause for alarm? Carden, Lorenzo's father is a mafia lord who literally goes by the name the Devil. Vivian is out there somewhere in a sports car with a handful of men who don't even know what they're up against, and you're telling me there's no cause for alarm?""I heard you the first time.""Then why do you look like I just told you it might rain?"Carden walked back into the room slowly, his footsteps unhurried against the concrete. He reached into his jacket and pulled out the dagger he had taken from Lorenzo. He turned it in his fingers once, testing the balance, studying
CHAPTER 161
He crossed the room and crouched in front of Lorenzo again, his elbows resting on his knees, his body language so relaxed it was almost offensive."People who are afraid of losing things can be manipulated through those things. I've been in this business long enough to know that. So when someone sits in front of me and starts listing the names of everyone I care about, I understand what they're doing. And I also understand that if that threat were as immediate as you're pretending it is, you wouldn't be spending time announcing it. You'd be counting on it having already happened."Lorenzo said nothing. His fingers pressed flat against the concrete floor."So," Carden continued, "the fact that you're sitting here using it as a negotiating tool tells me one of two things. Either your father doesn't know you're in this situation yet, which means the threat is currently hypothetical. Or he does know, and he's already made his move, which means me standing here worrying about it changes no
CHAPTER 162
The communicator in Sebastian's hand exploded into activity. He was already moving toward the far corner of the lair, pressing the device to his ear, his voice shifting into the clipped, authoritative tone that came when he was coordinating forces across multiple locations."I need triangulation on that last ping," Sebastian said. His fingers flew across the screen simultaneously, pulling up maps, marking coordinates. "Cross reference with known Stone properties in the tri-county area. I don't care if it's a rumor or registered, I want everything."He paused, listening to whoever was on the other end."Then unfreeze the assets. I authorized you to use whatever resources necessary. If that's not clear in the paperwork, then clarify it now because we're running on minutes, not hours."Another pause."Do it."He ended the call and immediately started typing again, his good arm a blur of motion across the screen while his injured arm remained pressed against his ribs to minimize the movem
CHAPTER 163
Sebastian was holding the communicator in one hand, his face tight with focus. "We have her location. Or at least, we have a property that matches the parameters. Stone-owned facility about forty miles north, registered under a shell company but the signature traces back to Jerry's operational structure.""How certain?""Seventy percent. Could be misdirection. Could be where they're holding her before moving her somewhere else. But it's the only location that makes sense given the timing and the resources available to move her."Carden was already moving toward the door. "Get the team mobilized.""Already done. They're thirty minutes out from the location. We can coordinate from your vehicle once you're topside.""How long until you have eyes on the property?""Fifteen minutes for surveillance, assuming they're not expecting a hostile approach. Another ten for assault preparation if we get a green light.""You have twenty minutes total.""Carden, that's not—""Twenty minutes," Carden