2026-01-31 21:12:36
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Chapter 10
Kade learned the truth that shattered every reason Celessa had ever hunted him.The sealed file contained twenty years of documentation about Elena Thorne. He read every page three times before he could accept what he was seeing.His mother wasn't just connected to the Thorne Network—she had created it from nothing.Twenty-five years ago, Elena was a brilliant strategist working in corporate finance. She identified a gap in the market where illegal operations could be hidden behind legitimate businesses and built an entire system to exploit it.The Thorne Network started small with a few shell companies, some offshore accounts, and basic money laundering for mid-level criminals who needed a way to clean their cash. But Elena was ambitious, smart, and ruthless when she needed to be. Within five years, she had expanded into human trafficking, weapons dealing, and political corruption.She made herself untouchable by making herself necessary. Every powerful person in City B owed her some
Chapter 9
Kade kissed Silisa knowing exactly who her mother was, hating himself for needing her.Two weeks had passed since their first meeting at the Harbor Club. He spent every day verifying her information and testing her loyalty. So far, everything she gave him was accurate.The server location was real. Security schedules were updated weekly. Financial records showed decades of money laundering, human trafficking, and corruption so deep it made his stomach turn.Through it all, Silisa kept showing up with more information, more access, and more reasons for him to trust her.They met in different locations every time—coffee shops, parks, and hotel lobbies. Always public spaces, always crowded, always somewhere Celessa's people couldn't listen in without being obvious.Tonight they were in a restaurant on the waterfront. Silisa sat across from him wearing a black dress that probably cost more than most people's cars. Kade tried not to notice how beautiful she was."You're distracted." She to
Chapter 8
Kade didn't attack the Thorne empire. He dissected it.Three days after Celessa's phone call, he stood in a warehouse on the edge of the Slag Districts and watched his team unload crates of documents they had stolen from a Thorne shipping facility."Is this everything?" he asked the woman in charge.She nodded and pulled out a tablet. "Shipping manifests going back five years. Customer lists. Payment records. Everything they thought was safely locked away in their private servers." She swiped through screens. "The encryption was military-grade, but we had military-grade tools, so it all evened out."Kade picked up one of the manifests and scanned through the entries. Container shipments were listed as electronics, textiles, and machine parts, but the weights were wrong and the destinations didn't match. He had seen enough smuggling operations during the war to know exactly what he was looking at."How many of these are fake?" he said."About sixty percent. The rest are legitimate busi
Chapter 7
Celessa Thorne didn't hunt like a predator. She collected like a god.Kade's phone rang at three in the morning. He answered without checking the caller ID. Only a handful of people had this number, and all of them knew better than to call unless it was important."Hello, Kade." The voice was smooth and cold, like expensive whiskey poured over ice. "Or should I call you Marcus Chen? That was the name you used at the auction, wasn't it?"He sat up in bed and went completely still. "Who is this?""You don't recognize my voice?" She laughed, and the sound made his skin crawl. "I suppose it has been a long time. Ten years since you ran away. Ten years since I had to explain to your father why his son abandoned him after everything we did for your family."Celessa."How did you get this number?" Kade kept his voice calm even though his heart was pounding."I own half the telecommunications companies in this region and have friends in the other half. Getting a phone number is child's play."
Chapter 6
"You planned all this?" She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand."I planned for every possibility." Kade took out a phone from his pocket and handed it to her. "This is encrypted. Only call the numbers already programmed in. Don't contact anyone from your old life. Don't tell anyone where you're going. Celessa has people everywhere. If she finds out where you are, she'll come for you again.""What about Aunt Mira?" Her voice cracked when she said the name.Kade didn't want to tell her, but she deserved the truth. "She's alive, but barely. I got her to a doctor I trust. She'll recover, but it's going to take time."Lyric closed her eyes. More tears ran down her face. "This is my fault. If I'd been stronger or smarter or...""Stop." He put his hands on her shoulders. "None of this is your fault. Celessa did this. The Thorne family did this. I'm going to make sure they pay for every second of pain they caused."She looked up at him and saw something shift in her expression. "That's
Chapter 5
They called her a product, but Lyric knew she was bait.The room where they kept them was underground with no windows. It smelled like bleach trying to cover something worse. Twelve other girls were there with her. None of them would look at her. Looking meant acknowledging what was about to happen.A woman in a gray suit came in every few hours to check on them and make sure they stayed presentable. The first time Lyric tried to speak, the woman slapped her hard enough that her ear rang for twenty minutes."Don't talk." The woman walked around Lyric in a slow circle. "Don't cry. Don't resist. Buyers want perfect merchandise. If you're damaged, your price drops. If your price drops, we have to get creative about making up the difference."Lyric didn't ask what creative meant. She already knew from the way the other girls flinched when the woman said it.They gave them white dresses that were too thin and too short. Lyric put hers on because refusing would make things worse. She had le
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