2026-05-13 16:19:46Two of the other bodyguards moved to her before she could take another step.
They were not rough but they were completely immovable, and within seconds Jenna found herself pinned, her arms locked, her feet barely touching the ground.
Mark found his voice again somewhere under the shock and the humiliation, and what came out of him was raw and ugly.
"I will kill you!" he screamed, spittle at the corner of his mouth, his eyes red. "Every single one of you! I will have your entire families wiped out, you hear me? You are all dead!"
Jenna, never one to be outdone, started screaming curses. Real ones, the kind that came from somewhere low and desperate, strung together in a breathless torrent aimed at Vivien, at the bodyguards, at anyone within range.
Vivien's face changed.
It was subtle. The composed mask did not crack exactly, but something behind her eyes went very still and very sharp, the way a person goes still when something crosses a line they cannot ignore.
Her grandfather was lying in a hospital bed right now, his body failing him, doctors standing around him with nothing useful to offer. And this woman on the ground was screaming curses at her family.
"A hundred times," Vivien said quietly.
One of the bodyguards looked at her. "Miss Holden?"
"Slap her," Vivien replied, her voice perfectly even. "A hundred times."
The color drained from Jenna's face immediately.
What followed was not quick. It was methodical and it was thorough, and Jenna went from screaming insults to screaming in pain to, eventually, sobbing and begging with her palms pressed flat against the floor.
"Stop, please, please stop, I am sorry, I am sorry, please."
Mark, who had been scrambling to his feet with the intention of rushing at Vivien, met two bodyguards before he got within three steps of her.
The struggle lasted about four seconds. When it was over, Mark was on the ground and one of his legs was bent at an angle that made it immediately obvious something had snapped.
His scream was long and high and genuine.
Edward had been standing in the doorway watching all of this with his arms loose at his sides and a slight frown pulling at his brow.
Not distress exactly. More the expression of a man watching something messy happen in a place he cared about.
He looked at Vivien. "Stop."
She glanced at him.
"This is the house my parents left me," he continued, his voice quiet and completely without drama. "I do not want their screaming in it. It is irritating." He tilted his head slightly toward the gate. "Make them leave."
Vivien held his gaze for a moment, then turned and gave the bodyguards a small nod.
The bodyguards stepped back.
Vivien looked down at Jenna, who was hunched on the ground with her hair loose and her face swollen, shaking visibly.
"You are leaving with your life," Vivien informed her, her voice carrying no satisfaction, just fact. "That is because of Mr. Harper. If it were my decision alone, you would be leaving without at least one hand." She straightened slightly. "Be grateful and do not come back."
Jenna did not argue. She could not even fully stand on her own.
She grabbed Mark's arm and dragged herself upright, and together they stumbled toward the gate, Mark half hopping and half dragging his broken leg, his face white and soaked with tears he was too proud to wipe away.
Nobody followed them.
They made it to the road outside the villa gates.
Jenna leaned against the wall, breathing hard, her hands shaking as she pushed her hair out of her face.
Mark slid down against the wall beside her, clutching his leg, his teeth grinding against the pain.
For a moment neither of them spoke.
Then Jenna's hand moved to her pocket.
She pulled out her phone, her fingers clumsy and urgent, and dialed. It barely rang once before the other line picked up.
"Ken." Her voice broke on the first word, and the tears came flooding out of her all at once, messy and uncontrolled. "Ken, that criminal, that useless criminal Edward, he had someone break Mark's leg. He broke our son's leg, Ken. Come here right now. Come here right now!"
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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
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