Chapter 765
Chapter 765:
“But Celeste isn’t found,” Skye countered, her eyes darkening as she looked at him over the rim of her mug. “Your team combed the wreckage. No body. No DNA matches. She slipped away, Liam. How? You said you knocked her out p>
Liam’s jaw tightened, a shadow passing over his eyes. “I did. She was unconscious when I left her. But her extraction team… they were breaching the north sector just as I exited. They must have dragged her out before the gas lines ignited. She’s a survivor, Skye. Like a cockroach p>
“She has no resources left,” Liam argued, though the edge in his voice suggested he wasn’t entirely convinced. “We destroyed her life’s work. The K-Syndicate won’t look kindly on failure. She’s running for her life, not plotting p>
“The Architect is plotting,” Skye reminded him. She set the coffee down, her hand trembling slightly until Liam covered it with his own. “That message on the screen before the explosion… ‘Game on.’ This wasn’t the end, Liam. It was just the opening move of the real war p>
Liam’s expression hardened. He squeezed her hand. “Then we’ll be ready. But for tonight, we breathe. You need to sleep, Skye. You haven’t closed your eyes in forty-eight hours p>
“I can’t,” she admitted. “If I sleep, I lose control p>
“I’ll take the watch,” Liam said firmly. “I’ll sit right here. I won’t let anyone through that door. Not the Syndicate, not the Architect, not a ghost p>
Skye looked at him—the man who had come back from the dead, who had walked into fire for her. The wall she had built around her heart during their divorce had crumbled into dust long ago.
“Okay,” she whispered.
She leaned back, letting her eyes drift shut. The last thing she felt was Liam’s hand anchoring her to reality, keeping the darkness at bay.
But peace was a fleeting luxury.
Downstairs, in the command center set up in the library, Julian was staring at a bank of monitors. His face was pale, sweat beading on his forehead—the aftershocks of the neural torture he’d endured were still firing in his synapses—but his fingers flew across the keyboard.
“We have a problem,” Julian croaked into his headset. “Parker, look at the market data. Kensington Global p>
𝘋і𝗌с𝗼𝘷е𝘳 n𝖾𝘸 ѕ𝗍𝗼𝗋іeѕ 𝗼𝘯 b𝘦.𝗰o𝘮
“I see it,” Parker’s voice crackled back. “Short selling. Massive volume. Someone is dumping stock p>
“It’s not just dumping,” Julian muttered, zooming in on the transaction codes. “It’s a hostile takeover triggered by a debt clause. They aren’t attacking with bombs this time. They’re attacking with lawyers p>
Julian grabbed his cane and limped toward the stairs.
The war hadn’t waited for morning.
The air in the Kensington Global boardroom was recycled and cold, smelling faintly of lemon polish and impending doom. Skye Sterling sat at the head of the long mahogany table, her white suit pristine, her posture rigid. She was the acting CEO, the general holding the line. To her right sat Beatrice Kensington, looking smaller than she ever had. The matriarch was present, but stripped of her power—her hands trembling as she gripped her cane, reduced to a spectator in the empire she once ruled.
Across from Skye sat three men in identical charcoal suits. They didn’t look like lawyers; they looked like sharks that had learned to tie a Windsor knot.