Chapter 967
“I know,” he said, cutting her off gently. “I know about you and Liam. I know it’s complicated. But I needed you to know. I’m yours. Forever.”
He knelt — not a proposal in the traditional sense, but a vow. A knight pledging his sword to his queen.
“Forever,” he whispered.
Skye reached down and touched his face, her fingers tracing the line of his jaw.
The massive screen on the ship’s bridge blazed to life.
A video call was overriding their systems. Skye turned.
𝗦𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝗴𝗮𝗹𝗻𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹𝘀.𝗰𝗼𝗺
It was The Administrator.
He sat in a stark white room. Beside him, bound to a metal chair, was Parker.
“Parker!” Skye screamed.
Parker looked terrible — bruised, his clothes torn, blood running from a fresh cut on his forehead.
“A touching scene,” The Administrator said, his voice dripping with contempt. “Romeo and Juliet on the high seas. But you forgot one thing.”
“Let him go!” Alistair rose to his feet, his face contorting with rage.
“You took my ledger,” The Administrator said, infuriatingly calm. “So I took your hacker. A fair exchange.”
He produced a knife, its blade glinting under the harsh white light. “Say goodbye to your friends, Parker.”
“Go to hell,” Parker spat, though his voice trembled.
The Administrator drew the blade across Parker’s arm. Blood welled up instantly, vivid red against pale skin.
Parker screamed.
“Stop!” Skye gripped the railing, her knuckles white.
“Come and get him,” The Administrator said, wiping the blade casually on Parker’s shirt. “I’ll be waiting.”
The screen went black.
Silence fell over the deck — not the silence of fear, but of something colder. Harder. The silence of absolute, crystallized hatred.
Alistair turned to face the sea. His hands found the railing and gripped it until the metal groaned.
“I’m going to kill him,” Alistair said, his voice utterly flat. Not a threat. A fact.
Liam stepped out of the shadows. He had seen everything. He moved to stand beside Alistair, shoulder to shoulder. For the first time, they didn’t look like rivals. They looked like brothers in arms, bound by a shared and burning fury.
“Together,” Liam said, his voice low and dangerous. “Slowly.”
Skye looked out at the dark horizon. Somewhere beyond the churning water, the oil rig waited.
“Full speed ahead,” she said, her voice clear and unwavering. “We go to war.”
The internet was burning.
While the ship cut through the waves, a different battle raged on the mainland — a digital war for public perception. The Administrator had unleashed his troll farms, flooding every platform with a relentless barrage of fabricated headlines.
ORACLE CEO ACCUSED OF EMBEZZLEMENT. MAXIMILLIAN STERLING A FRAUD? DNA EVIDENCE PENDING. VANCE FAMILY LINKED TO TERRORISM.
Skye watched the stock prices plummet on her tablet, a rapid and terrifying descent. “He’s destroying our credibility. If we land on that rig, we’ll be branded as terrorists attacking a sovereign corporate entity. Not heroes.”
“He’s cutting off our retreat,” Julian said from the comms room, his voice grim. “We need a counter-narrative.”
“We don’t have time to build one from scratch,” Skye said.
.