Chapter 939
Liam was faster. A single shot rang out and the weapon skittered across the floor.
Alistair tackled the impostor, driving him to the ground. “Who hired you?”
“The Mastermind!” the Fake screamed. “He promised me the empire!”
Skye was already at Ethan’s side. She tore the IV from his arm and cupped his face in her hands.
“Ethan.” She patted his cheek gently. “Wake up.”
Ethan groaned. His eyes fluttered open, the dead vacancy replaced by pain and confusion.
𝖭𝖾𝗐 𝖼𝗵a𝗽tе𝘳𝘀 e𝘃𝗲𝗋𝘆 𝘄ееk o𝗇 𝘨а𝗅𝘯ov𝖾𝘭𝘴.со𝗺
“Skye?” he croaked. “Why does it smell like burnt toast?”
“It’s over, Ethan.” She pulled him into a hug, tears of relief falling freely. “We got you.”
Liam drifted to the window and looked out over the city. The rain had finally stopped.
“We took back the company,” he said quietly. “We saved the girl. We saved the brother.”
“But the Mastermind is still out there,” Alistair said, hauling the Fake Lucian upright.
“Let him come,” Lucian said, his gaze sweeping across his reclaimed empire. “We know his face now. Or at least the face he tried to steal.”
Skye rose to her feet, flanked by the men who had fought for her, bled for her, and at times betrayed her. She looked at Liam, then at Alistair, then at Julian on a video call from his hospital bed.
The web was broken. But the spider was still hungry.
“This wasn’t a victory,” Skye said, watching the first light of sunrise bleed across the skyline. “It was just the opening move.”
The flashbulbs inside the Sea City News Center were not merely light — they were physical assaults, rapid-fire bursts of white heat that seemed to burn the air itself. The room smelled of ozone and the nervous sweat of a hundred reporters packed too tightly together.
Skye stood at the podium, her hands gripping the edges of the wood until her knuckles turned the color of bone. She wore a suit that cost more than most people’s cars — a shield of tailored wool and silk — but beneath it, her skin felt too tight, prickling with the ghost of adrenaline from the rig explosion just forty-eight hours ago.
“The crisis at Graves Industries has been contained,” Skye said, her voice steady, practiced. It was the voice of The Oracle, not the woman who had watched a man fall from a helicopter, nor the woman who had spent the last twelve hours ensuring that Ethan Vance and Victoria Hayes were stabilized in a private medical wing under maximum security. “Market stability is our priority. The recent turbulence was a restructuring.”
To her right, a chair sat empty. Liam’s chair. The vacancy felt like a missing tooth — a gap the tongue kept finding, irritating and impossible to ignore. He wasn’t here. He was overseeing the transfer of the recovered hostages, ensuring the Mastermind couldn’t strike while they were vulnerable.
.