2025-12-17 19:32:44
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
Chapter 386: The Devil with Fewer Teeth!
The lights were low in the study at Sky Tower. The empty chair at the head of the desk was a silent scream, but Copper no longer looked at it. His gaze was fixed on Whitaker, who stood by the fireplace, a glass of water in hand instead of whiskey. The old soldier listened, his face an impassive mask, as Copper relayed the conversation in the bar.“...and then she presented Celestine. Not as a suggestion, but as a solution,” Copper finished, his voice rough. “A way to reclaim the empire from Peniel’s grasp.”Whitaker took a slow sip of water, his eyes distant, assessing the battlefield from a new, unexpected angle. “Celestine,” he murmured.This was looking like a teasing game already. A few months ago, they had been the ones who had wanted to find Elara’s daughter connecting it to the reason why Elara suddenly showed up after twenty years.And now, here they were no longer sure of the path to take. Both men knew Elara very well and what kind of games she knows how to play best.Since
Chapter 385: The Keeper in the Ruins!
The whiskey in Copper’s glass was cheap, the burn a welcome distraction from the deeper, more profound ache in his chest.He had lost. Not just a battle, but the entire war. The purpose of his life had been voted out of existence by men in suits who valued stability over truth, profit over justice. Peniel’s final words echoed in his skull: “Try to find some peace in the ruins.”Ruins. That’s all he had. The ruins of a promise made to a dying friend. The ruins of a legacy he’d guarded with his life. The ashes of a boy he’d loved as a son.He lifted the glass, the amber liquid catching the low light. He didn’t drink. He just stared into it, as if the answers might swirl up from the bottom.Why didn’t you fight harder? The thought, vicious and unbidden, rose from the depths of his grief. You were Flameborn. You survived the impossible before. You were supposed to be stronger than fire.He blamed Jackson, for a fleeting, shameful second. He blamed him for succumbing, for leaving him alone
Chapter 384: The Transfer of Power!
The boardroom of Hart Global Holdings was a temple to a bygone era. The atmosphere was thick with a tension far removed from the raw grief of the cemetery. This was a colder, sharper thing—the tension of calculation, of opportunity, of legacy being weighed and measured.Mr. Copper sat in his customary seat, not at the head—that chair had been Jackson’s, and now stood hauntingly empty—but close to it. He looked like a man carved from ancient stone, his grief etched so deep it had become a new topography on his face. Whitaker was not present; his role had never been corporate. Copper was the last sentinel.The other board members avoided his eyes. They were a mix of old-guard loyalists, their faces pale with genuine loss, and pragmatic operators already adjusting their mental spreadsheets. The silence was broken only by the soft rustle of agendas and the click of a pen.Then the double doors opened.All heads turned. Peniel walked in, and a chill seemed to follow him, cutting through
Chapter 383: Ashes to Ashes!
The sky over the Hart family cemetery was a seamless, unforgiving sheet of iron-gray. It promised rain but withheld it, as if even the heavens could not muster the appropriate tears for such a stolen farewell. The air was still and heavy, thick with the scent of damp earth and cut flowers that did little to mask the deeper smell of loss.Jackson’s friends stood in a half-circle around the raw, open wound in the earth. A crowd of black-clad mourners stretched back towards the gothic mausoleums and weathered headstones, a mix of high-society faces, corporate vultures, and genuine friends. But at the front, closest to the abyss, was the inner circle—shattered, holding each other up. It was still appearing like a dream when the doctor first made the pronouncement that one of the two recovered bodies from the inferno was actually Jackson.They had thought he had made some kind of mistake and that Jackson would be found soon alive. But as the days rolled by and the media began pushing the
Chapter 382: The Official Pronouncement!
The waiting room of the city's central medical examiner's office was a study in sterile dread. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, bleaching the color from every face. The air smelled of antiseptic and despair.They sat in a ragged line of grief and defiance: Copper, rigid in a chair, his knuckles white where they gripped his knees. Whitaker stood sentinel by the door, his usual calm replaced by a coiled, predatory stillness. Bella’s face was a mask of tear-streaked porcelain, Nancy’s arm wrapped tightly around her shoulders. James stared at the floor, while Andrew and Evans exchanged silent, haunted glances. They were a fortress under siege, and the final battering ram was moments away.The tension was a physical thing, thick enough to choke on. Every tick of the wall clock was a gunshot. Every footstep in the corridor outside sent a jolt through them.They had clung, for forty-eight agonizing hours, to a single, fraying thread of hope. The math of two bodies and three people. Jackso
Chapter 381: Once Jackson is Declared Dead!
Sophia’s voice, when it came again, was no longer probing. It was calculating, and sharpened by a lifetime of near-misses and second-place finishes. “It makes me feel… practical. But let’s not pretend the path is clear. My mother, Priscilla… Philip’s own twin sister. She was conspicuously absent from his final will. My Grandfather left her nothing. The legal world, and the board, will see that as a deliberate disinheritance of that entire branch. Any claim I make will be challenged immediately. They’ll say Philip wanted his fortune to end with his son, not pass to a sister he clearly had… issues with.”She was right of course. The omission of her mother’s name from the will was a thunderous statement from the grave. Though it was widely believed that the Harts were nothing during the time of her grandfather, she still felt it was injustice to have sidelined her mother from his last will and testament.“We don’t have to make a legal claim based on blood,” Peniel said, his voice a soft
You may also like
The Charismatic Charlie Wade
Lord Leaf63.3M viewsThe Ultimate Husband
Skykissing Wolf7.7M viewsTrillionaire they never noticed
Alfred ifeanyi72.2K viewsThe Legendary King Of War Returns
Victoria T.O186.8K viewsThe Blood Harem-Three Fates
Novel Eva846 viewsRevenge Of The Student Billionaire
Christy I.1.0K viewsSupreme Legacy: Rise and Revenge
Lily Monroe1.3K viewsI'm Invincible In The World
JR23274 views