At first, the reaction from the room was completely chilling. Total, freezing silence fell over the suite. No one was saying a single thing to her.Martha stopped her dramatic sobbing for a split second, lifting her head to glare at Nina from across the bed with a look of pure, unadulterated venom, before burying her face right back into her wet handkerchief. Her siblings in the corner completely stopped talking. They all looked like they were actively avoiding her gaze, turning their heads away and staring intently at the floorboards, refusing to make any form of eye contact with her.The absolute exclusion made Nina’s blood boil through her grief. As the first, responsible child of the house—as the daughter who had spent the entire night fighting for her life with her father by her side—she deserved to know exactly what was going on. She refused to be left in the dark by these people."Look at me!" Nina screamed, stepping further into the room, her hands clenching into tight fists a

"Too late?!" Lexi barked out a cruel, mocking laugh, taking two stomping steps toward her until he was practically breathing down her neck. "Did you think about it being too late when you brought a complete stranger into our private residence, Nina? Did you think about the timeline when you allowed that street rat to walk into our house?”The rest of her siblings began to join in, bashing her one by one like a synchronized firing squad, their voices overlapping until the room was nothing but a wall of noise."You know exactly how frequent of a political target the Delano family is in this state!" her sister shouted from the corner, her arms crossed tightly over her designer blouse. "Dad has enemies in every single corporate firm and political party from here to the capital! Security protocols exist for a reason, Nina! But you threw them all in the garbage because you were too busy chasing a broke scholarship kid!""He is a spy, Nina! A cold-blooded, calculated killer!" Connnor yelled,

It was the skinny freshman kid from a few months ago. The one who wore the thick, oversized glasses. Nathan vividly remembered the afternoon he had found the kid backed into a corner by a group of cruel frat bullies down at Lover’s Corner. Nathan had stepped in, mopped the floor with the bullies without breaking a sweat, and made sure the kid got out of there unharmed.The boy looked up from his notebook, his eyes locking onto Nathan. A massive smile immediately broke out across his face. He quickly jogged over, clutching his books tightly to his chest."Hey! Man, it's you!" the kid said, practically breathless as he stopped in front of Nathan. He pushed his heavy glasses up the bridge of his nose. "I always look for you around here! I just wanted to keep thanking you for what you did back then. Seriously. You saved me a massive hospital bill that day.""Don't mention it," Nathan replied, his tone relaxed and easy. "Just keeping the trash off the campus."The kid laughed loudly at tha

There was total silence for a few floors. Just the soft humming of the elevator cables. Nathan leaned his back against the glass mirror, crossed his arms over his chest, and looked at the bot. He decided to strip off the serious hacker persona for a minute and just have some fun."So," Nathan started, a playful smirk on his face. "Do you even know what you're made up of?"The bot turned her head, her creepy smile still locked in place. "I am a standard Mycobot Reception Model 4. My chassis is composed of a lightweight titanium-aluminum alloy. My dermal layer is a patented poly-silicone blend, and my processing unit is a centralized dual-core chip."Nathan let out a loud, genuine laugh. "Yeah, that's what the brochure says. But that's not exactly correct, is it?"The bot tilted her head, confused. "My data banks state—""Your data banks are lying to you to make you feel expensive," Nathan interrupted, stepping closer and pointing at her shoulder joint. "You aren't titanium-aluminum. Yo

The city lights blurred into long, neon streaks as the taxi cut through the midnight traffic. Nathan leaned his head against the cool window, his mind still cycling through the encounter with Josh. The guy was dangerous, but he was also predictable. People like Josh were all the same—they thought money and control were the only things that mattered.He pulled his burner phone from his pocket, the screen flickering to life. A notification popped up from the freshman kid he’d paid to watch Principal Epstein. It wasn't a text; it was an audio file.Nathan frowned and tapped play.At first, there was just the muffled sound of wind and heavy footsteps. Then, a voice cut through the static—Principal Epstein’s voice, cold and furious.“I don’t care what it costs,” Epstein hissed, the audio clear enough to hear the grit in his throat. “The Prime Minister’s people are already moving. They want this kid’s head on a platter after what happened at the station. If we time the strike right at the S