2026-09-16 04:33:16
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CHAPTER 23: The Quad Attack
Midterms week at Westwood Elite University was the one week when everyone pretended to study.The quad was full. Blankets on the grass. Laptops open. Iced coffee everywhere. Girls in Lululemon pretending to read business law. Guys pretending to care.Trenton Alex sat on the grass in white Dior.Not because he wanted to. Because he needed to remember.He bought $2 coffee from the same cart he used to buy it from when he picked bottles. The same man was there. The same cart. The same burnt smell."Chairman?" the man said, confused. "You want the $2 coffee?""I want the $2 coffee," Trenton said.He sat on the grass. White Dior trousers. Common Projects sneakers. Patek Philippe. Drinking $2 coffee out of a paper cup that burned his fingers.Around him, without planning it, they gathered.Sophia Reed, brown ponytail, glasses, law notes everywhere, knee still bandaged from the library sniper, sitting too close to him, sharing his coffee.Isabella Sterling, blonde, British-American, MBA, gol
CHAPTER 22: The Lab Burns
The lab burned like a paper model of Claire's future.Trenton saw it first from PCH. He was doing 140 in the Bugatti Chiron, Claire in the passenger seat, both still in what they wore at Villa Azure — her in silk pajamas and his Tom Ford jacket over them, him in a torn Dior shirt with dried blood on the cuff and glass still in his hair.Behind them, Marcus and two Escalades with Villa Azure security. Sirens behind them that were not for them.Torrance at 11:42 PM smelled like chemicals and smoke and sea air.The Sullivan Biotech R&D building was three stories of white and glass that Claire had built from nothing at 19. $2 billion in trials inside. A cancer cure that could save her mother's sister. A decade of work.Now it was orange.Flames ate the second floor. Black smoke poured from the lab windows. Firefighters were there but they were standing back. Biotech fire. Chemicals. They had to let it burn controlled.Students and lab techs stood on the street in lab coats and pajamas, wa
CHAPTER 21: Villa Azure - All of Them in My Kitchen
Trenton Alex stared at the photo on the dead sniper's phone.His mother. In Lagos. At Balogun Market, smiling, holding a plastic bag of tomatoes. Wearing the blue wrapper she always wore to market. Taken yesterday. The timestamp in the corner: 05/14, 4:32 PM WAT.Caption underneath: She still makes that soup you like?His mother made egusi soup every Sunday. Only people who had eaten at his house knew that.Someone had been in Lagos. Someone had stood close enough to his mother to take a photo without her noticing. Someone wanted him to know they could get to her.Trenton's hand — the one wrapped in Claire's bloody Hermes handkerchief — started to shake. Not from blood loss. From something colder.Marcus, his head of security, saw his face."Chairman?""Get me a team in Lagos. Now. Two men. On my mother. 24/7. No one touches her. No one talks to her without my permission. And get me Leon Shepherd's phone records. I want to know who he called in Nigeria.""Yes, sir."Trenton slipped t
CHAPTER 20: The Library Sniper
The law library at Westwood Elite had floor-to-ceiling windows.That was the selling point in the brochure. "Study with natural light. See the quad. Feel inspired."It was also the perfect place to kill someone.Trenton Alex took the stairs.Forty-three floors. In a Dior suit. With a bleeding hand wrapped in a bloody Hermes handkerchief. He didn't wait for the elevator. Elevators are boxes. Boxes are traps.He took the emergency stairs three at a time. His Tom Ford loafers slipped on the concrete. He didn't care.His phone was in his left hand, screen on, red dot flashing.Sophia Reed — SOS. SOS. SOS.She had shared her location with him after the Malibu charity gala where Leon tried to poison him. "Just in case," she had said, blushing, brown ponytail swinging. "You know, in case you get lost. You get lost a lot."She was the only girl who had ever been nice to him when he was picking bottles. No camera. No TikTok. Just a $2 coffee left on his crate with a note: You looked cold.Now
CHAPTER 19: Sneakers in the Boardroom
Claire Sullivan had never worn sneakers to a board meeting in her life.So when she walked into the 43rd floor of Sullivan Biotech at 8:03 AM in white Common Projects sneakers, a black Tom Ford blazer, her hair down instead of up, and holding the bleeding hand of a 19-year-old who used to pick bottles behind her building, twelve billionaires choked on their coffee.The boardroom was glass and steel and worth $30 billion. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Los Angeles. A table made from a single piece of black walnut that cost more than most houses.Every seat was taken. David Kim, CFO. Patel, head of R&D. Victor Kane, head of legal. And at the far end, legs crossed, silver hair perfect, Tom Ford suit perfect, smile perfect.Leon Shepherd. 45. Cruel handsome. Arthur Blackwood's half-brother. Owner of 19% of Sullivan Biotech. The man who tried to poison Arthur. The man who tried to poison Claire last night.He clapped slowly when they walked in."Well, well. The Ice Queen and the jani
CHAPTER 18: The Poison Glass
The tray never reached the table.Trenton moved.He didn't lunge. He didn't shout. The Blackwood Fist Arthur's trainer had beaten into him in the Villa Azure gym was not about shouting. It was about distance and timing.Two steps. One hand under the tray.He flipped it.Two glasses of Montrachet, $400 each, shattered on the marble floor. Wine spread like blood.The restaurant went dead silent.The busboy froze for half a second. Then his other hand went into his apron.Not a towel.A knife. Short. Kitchen knife. The kind that could slide between ribs.Claire's hand was still in the air, halfway to where the glass had been."Stay back," Trenton said to her. His voice was low.The busboy swung. Wild. Fast. He was not a professional chef. He was professional at something else.Trenton caught his left wrist. The one with the tattoo.He saw it up close now. Black falcon, wings spread, talons out, inked on the inside of the wrist. Every member of Falcon's Creed had it. Arthur told him in th
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