2026-05-13 16:18:50Vivien's eyes moved to Jenna slowly, the way someone turns to look at something that has just made an unpleasant noise.
The warmth that had been in her voice when she spoke to Edward was completely gone. What replaced it was flat and cold and entirely unbothered.
"Who are you?" she asked, her tone carrying no heat, no curiosity, nothing at all. Just the bare question, the way you might ask someone why they were standing in the middle of a road.
Jenna blinked, clearly not expecting to be spoken to like that. She straightened her back and pulled her expression into something sharp and dismissive, her eyes raking over Vivien once from head to toe.
"Who am I?" Jenna's lip curled. "I am asking the questions here, not you. You walked onto private property with your little bodyguard parade like you own the street." She took one step forward, her voice dropping into something uglier. "You are nobody. A pretty face with rented muscle. Now take your shameless self and get out of my sight before I have you removed."
Vivien stared at her for one long second.
Then she laughed. Not the polite kind. The kind that comes out when something is so absurd it bypasses offense entirely and lands somewhere close to genuine amusement.
"Rented muscle," Vivien repeated softly, tilting her head just slightly. "That is interesting." Her eyes sharpened, the laughter fading from her mouth but not fully from her eyes. "You walked into this man's home uninvited, screamed at him like a fishwife, and now you are standing here telling me to leave." She looked at Jenna the way you look at something small and confused. "What exactly makes you this bold? I am genuinely curious."
Jenna's chin lifted. The pride came off her in waves, thick and self-satisfied.
"My daughter is Eliza Norton," she announced, letting the name sit in the air like she expected it to land with weight. "We are the Watson family. Our company is going public very soon and we will be a recognized third-tier family in this city before the year is out." She paused for effect, her eyes glittering. "And my daughter is currently in a relationship with Peter Henderson. The Henderson family. Second-tier. So yes, I think I have every right to stand here and speak however I please to people like you."
Vivien looked at her for a moment.
Then she smiled. It was a quiet smile, the kind that did not reach anywhere near warmth.
"A second-tier family," she murmured, almost to herself. "And a soon-to-be third-tier family." She glanced briefly at her own nails, then back at Jenna.
"Do you know how many families in this city would not even be permitted into the same building as me? Do you know what tier I come from?" She let that sit for exactly one breath. "Under normal circumstances, you would not qualify to hold a door open for me. And you are standing here using the Henderson name like it is a shield."
Jenna's smile flickered.
Vivien turned away from her as though the conversation was already finished, her eyes going to the bodyguards behind her.
"Remove them," she instructed, her voice utterly calm. "I have important matters to discuss with Mr. Harper and I will not do it with this noise in the background."
The bodyguards moved.
Mark's eyes went wide and he threw his hand up, his voice cracking with something between outrage and panic.
"Do not touch me!" He stepped back, his chest puffing out even as his jaw tightened. "Do you know who my future brother-in-law is? Peter Henderson! One call from him and every single one of you is finished! Nobody in this city touches me!"
The bodyguard closest to him did not slow down, did not hesitate, did not even blink.
The slap landed so hard Mark's whole head snapped sideways.
He stumbled back two full steps, his hand flying to his face, his eyes glassy and unfocused.
He stood there for a moment, swaying slightly, the arrogance knocked clean out of him like dust from an old rug.
Jenna screamed.
"How dare you!" She lurched forward, her composure completely shattered, her voice going shrill and high. "That is my son! That is my son, you animals!"
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
chapter 116: part-2
"You protected my assets.""Some of them. Not all. I did not have access to everything, and the ones I could reach, I had to move carefully, one at a time, over the course of months, without triggering any of the monitoring systems they had placed on your network.""Why." Edward leaned forward. "Why would you do that if you were working with the people who put me in prison.""Because I was not working with them when they put you in prison." John's voice cracked on the last three words, not dramatically, just a single fracture running through the surface of something that had been holding together for too long. "That came later.""Explain."John pressed both hands flat on the table. "After you disappeared, a man approached me. He knew everything. My connection to you, my connection to the Old Master, my financial history, my family. Everything." He paused. "He made me an offer. Cooperate and receive controlling interest in four major businesses that would set my family up for three gen
Chapter 116: The Photograph part-1
The tracking markers worked exactly as Edward had designed them.Within six hours, David Chen had mapped the movement of every document the armed men had carried out of the vault. Three went to a warehouse on the industrial side of the city. Two went to an address registered under a name that did not exist. The remaining three went to a single location that made Edward sit very still in his chair for a long time.John Santon's private financial office.Not his home. Not a hidden property. His actual office, the one with his name on the door, the one listed in public directories, the one where clients walked in during business hours and shook his hand and trusted him with their money.John had not tried to hide.Edward stared at the address on David's screen and turned that fact over in his mind. A guilty man hides. A desperate man runs. A man who lets stolen documents arrive at his own registered office is doing something else entirely.He was inviting Edward to come find them.Edward
chapter 115: part-2
Edward looked at the man who had fired, then at Richard's body on the floor, then back at the shooter. Something clicked into place behind his eyes."He was going to talk," Edward said calmly. "That is why you killed him. Not because he failed. Because he was about to become a problem."The shooter said nothing.Edward turned to the masked leader. "Richard was never important. He was a tool. A set of hands you needed to open a door, and the moment the door was open, the hands became disposable."The leader tilted his head slightly. "You are smarter than they told me you would be.""Who told you."No answer.Vivien moved forward. Her voice came out sharp and controlled, every word placed with the precision of someone who does not waste syllables. "Who sent you here. I want a name."The leader looked at her. "You are standing in a room full of documents you believe are valuable, Miss Holden. But the truth is that the original agreement, the real one, was removed from this vault years ag
Chapter 115: Abort part-1
The first thing that happened after the vault doors locked was silence. The kind that fills a sealed room the way pressure fills a diving bell, heavy and total and pressing against the eardrums.Then panic.One of the masked men grabbed the vault door and pulled. The steel did not move. He pulled again, harder, the muscles in his neck straining, his boots scraping against the polished floor."It is sealed," he said, turning to the others. His voice cracked on the second word. "The whole system is sealed.""Blow it open," another one said, reaching for his belt."With what. We are inside. Any charge strong enough to breach that door will kill everyone in this room, including us."The eight men looked at each other. Their training held their bodies still but their eyes were moving fast, scanning the walls, the ceiling, the cameras they had not noticed until the lights came on. The realization settled across them one face at a time, like dominoes falling.They had walked into a box and t
chapter 114: Part -2
"That sounds like something a person says when they have something to hide, John."Silence on the other end. A long, heavy silence."I am trying to protect you," John said finally, his voice quieter."From what.""From the consequences of knowing everything."Edward let the silence sit for three full seconds. "I appreciate the warning. But the vault opens tomorrow night."John said nothing more. The call ended.The following night, the Holden estate was lit from every window. Security teams lined the perimeter. Cars arrived carrying the family elders, each one escorted inside with the careful ceremony of people who understood that tonight carried weight.Vivien stood at the entrance to the vault level, her hands folded, her face a mask of cold authority. The elders filed past her one by one, descending the staircase into the reinforced corridor that led to the vault doors.Edward was not among them.He was in a security room on the floor above, watching four screens that showed every
Chapter 114: The Trap part-1
Edward spent thirty six hours preparing the vault and told no one what he had done inside it.He left every original document in place. Every record, every agreement, every piece of evidence that the enemy had spent years trying to destroy. He did not remove a single page.That was the bait.The trap was the room itself. He rewired the vault's locking mechanism to operate on a secondary circuit that only he controlled. He installed three cameras in positions that covered every angle of the interior. And he programmed the main doors to seal automatically the moment a specific signal was sent from his phone.When he was finished, he stood in the center of the vault and looked at the walls and the shelves and the decades of secrets stored inside them.Then he walked out and locked the door behind him.Vivien returned to Holden headquarters on a Tuesday morning. She walked through the lobby in the same dark coat she had been wearing the night she disappeared, her face carrying the cold co
You may also like
Secretly The Quadrillionaire's Heir
Viki West124.3K viewsHand of God
Anakin Detour81.4K viewsThe Unexpected Heir
Estherace87.4K viewsRevenge Of The Rejected Son-in-law
Teddy156.5K viewsThe Shadow Boy and the City of Glass
Mganus Abi173 viewsThe Son They Erased, Never Forgotten
Book Revolution 150 viewsBREAK THE HANDLER
Chidezny238 viewsThe CEO's Dirty Secret: Why the Billionaire Is Hiding?
Zhafran Akbar208 views