2024-09-10 08:22:31Those words sent shockwaves through everyone who had heard them. They couldn’t believe it, but the person who was most in disbelief was the first saleswoman. She snatched the phone from her colleague and dialed the number.
“Are you sure it was $500,000 received?” she yelled, her voice sharp with frustration.
Her tone was so rude that the person on the other end snapped back. “Why are you asking me an obvious question?!” he demanded. “$500,000 has been received! Is there some hotshot there or something?”
The saleswoman's words stuck in her throat as the confirmation hit her. The others who had belittled Tedmond earlier now remained silent, lips tightly sealed.
“Did you do something?” the voice on the phone asked, but the saleswoman quickly hung up, lowering her head.
She turned to Tedmond, bowing slightly. “I am extremely sorry for doubting you,” she stammered. “Can I get you a cup of tea as an apology while your things are packed?”
Tedmond glared down at her in silence. As she raised her head to meet his eyes, she flinched under his cold gaze.
“We made a deal, didn’t we?” Tedmond said calmly. “You were supposed to apologize while crawling around the store.”
Her eyes widened in disbelief. She hadn’t actually expected to do it. “But... but…”
His eyebrows arched. “What are you waiting for? Did you forget what I asked you to do?”
Trembling slightly, she shook her head. “I never intended to do that. Couldn’t we just—”
“Your job or the deal?” Tedmond asked casually, cutting her off.
Without hesitation, she hurried away from the front desk and fell to her knees, shivering with embarrassment. She was about to start crawling when he stopped her with his foot.
“You seem to be forgetting something,” he said darkly. “I told you to apologize to your co-worker.”
She turned her head toward the salesman and yelled, “I’m sorry!”
The salesman was taken aback, awkwardly averting his gaze.
“Now, continue crawling,” Tedmond ordered.
The woman resumed, her face flushed with humiliation, while the other customers who had supported her earlier began recording the scene on their phones.
Tedmond glanced at the other saleswomen, and they all avoided his gaze in fear. “The one crawling could’ve been any of you,” he warned, and the women flinched.
“I’ll get your things ready,” the salesman said quickly, as though trying to rescue the situation. “Thank you for your help.”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Tedmond replied. “I was only doing it for myself.”
Despite that, the salesman thanked him again and hurriedly packed Tedmond's purchases. Soon, Tedmond walked out of the store, and with the help of the staff, all of his items were loaded into the car.
“Should I drive you home, young master?” the driver asked, glancing back at Tedmond as he settled into the car.
Tedmond thought about it for a moment. He had left the house with only a few bags from his vacation, but he still had his things at the Griffin home.
“Drive me to Rolling Street,” he replied. “I have something to do there. Don’t wait for me—just drop me off.”
“Yes, young master.”
A few minutes later, Tedmond got out of the car far from his father's home to avoid drawing unnecessary attention. He waited for the driver to leave before walking toward the building.
The atmosphere was still cold, though not as biting as it had been earlier. After a short walk, he entered the Griffin compound. He wondered if his father had returned yet. Then, with a bitter thought, he corrected himself.
‘Ex-father.’
The man was no longer his father.
He pushed open the door and stepped inside, expecting to see his former family in the living room, but no one was there. He made his way toward the kitchen, glancing up the stairs as he walked.
His room wasn’t upstairs like the others'. Instead, it was in a small basement. The memory of the cramped space resurfaced as he approached.
“Didn’t you say he was in his room?!” a loud voice demanded, making Tedmond frown. It was Harold Griffin, his father—or rather, ex-father. “Where the hell is that brat?”
“He was here hours ago,” his stepmother, Evelyn, said, trying to calm him down.
“That brat!” Harold yelled.
Tedmond peeked through the open door. They were all in his room, no wonder the house had been quiet. Harold’s face was twisted in anger, the lines on his forehead prominent as he raged.
“Why are you looking for him?” Max, Tedmond's half-brother, asked. “We kicked him out of the family, like you said. He’s 19 now, and we no longer have to take care of him.”
Harold turned to glare at Max. “You should’ve done it while I was here!” he bellowed. “He has something important!”
Of course, Tedmond sighed. His father had no use for him unless it involved something valuable. Tedmond had considered giving them what they wanted and cutting all ties, but the next words made him pause.
“That stupid necklace his mother left him is valuable!” Harold claimed. “I just figured out its name and its worth!”
Tedmond’s hand instinctively reached for the necklace around his neck. It was the only thing his mother had left him, and for years, they had mocked it as something worthless. If they had known its value earlier, they would have sold it long ago.
His jaw clenched. Now, they wanted to find him only because they wanted something.
“I can get him back,” a voice said. It was Lisa, Tedmond’s ex-girlfriend, her face determined.
“And who the hell are you?” Harold demanded.
Apparently, he hadn’t attended the wedding.
“She’s my wife,” Max replied, and their sister Maxine nodded in agreement. “She’s Tedmond’s ex, and he’s still in love with her. She can trick him into giving us the necklace.”
Hearing that, Harold finally relaxed. “That’s settled then. We don’t need to bring him back here. That useless brat has caused enough trouble already. Get his stuff out of his room and toss it in the trash.”
“His room will become a storage space from now on,” Evelyn said, with a note of satisfaction. “I’ve wanted to get rid of him ever since he was brought here as a baby.”
Tedmond’s eyes darkened. He turned and left before they could notice him. Now he knew why they were looking for him, and he couldn’t wait for them to try. When they did, he would be ready with a nice surprise.
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CHAPTER 664
The secondary cooling tower was a brutalist spike of concrete and rusted iron, leaning out over the cliffside, isolated from the main facility. It had been designed to vent the Heart’s thermal energy, but as Tedmond, Lottie, and Marek sprinted across the connecting gantry, it was clear the tower was being repurposed for something far darker.The air grew colder, heavy with salt spray from the waves crashing hundreds of feet below.“Albert,” Tedmond barked into his comms. “Status on the tower’s structure.”“Not good, Master Tedmond,” Albert replied, his voice tight. “The Warden has initiated a Scrub protocol. He isn’t just venting gas… he’s triggered the explosive bolts in the foundation. The tower is standing on prayers and gravity alone. You have approximately seven minutes before it shears off the cliff.”“Seven minutes,” Tedmond repeated. He slammed a hand against the heavy blast doors at the base of the tower. It was locked.“Marek,” he commanded.Marek didn’t hesitate. He step
CHAPTER 663
The dates in the logbook didn’t merely align with history; they defied it.Tedmond’s thumb traced the ink on the most recent page. His breath hitched, the cold air of the cockpit suddenly feeling thin. The names scrawled in the Authorized Visitor column weren’t Syndicate officials. They weren’t names he recognized from the Board.The entries were coded, but the handwriting in the margin made his blood run cold. It was the elegant, sharp script of the woman who had taught him how to hold a pen.“Tedmond?” Lottie froze when she saw the color drain from his face. “What is it? Did you find the Board’s signatures?”“No,” Tedmond whispered, his voice sounding as though it came from a great distance. “Look at these signatures, Lottie. They aren’t people coming in to see her.”He turned the book toward her. The signatures under the Exit column for the last five years were all the same: M.W.“Is that the name, Mill Washington?” Lottie breathed, her eyes widening as she scanned the meticulo
CHAPTER 662
Marek’s hand shot out as Tedmond reached the top of the shaft, swinging onto solid floor just as the lift car snapped its final tether and plummeted into the abyss.Tedmond hit hard, coughing up the sweet taste of gas. He ripped off his mask, gasping for the smoke-filled air of the upper levels.“The transport,” Tedmond wheezed, looking at Marek. “Where is it?”“The hangar,” Marek grunted, helping him up. “But they’ve already cleared the roof. If we want to catch them, we have to take the Warden’s personal interceptor.”Tedmond stood, legs shaky but gaze as sharp as a bayonet. He glanced at the book in his hand, then toward the path to the hangar.“Then we take it,” he said. “And we shoot down anything that gets in our way.”The hangar was a cavernous expanse of polished chrome and reinforced steel, echoing with the distant groans of the facility’s dying infrastructure. In the center sat the Warden’s personal interceptor, a sleek, predatory craft that looked more like a shard of obsi
CHAPTER 661
Tedmond’s pulse hammered, but his face remained a mask of stone as the elevator plummeted.He felt the pressure shift in his ears, a stark reminder of how deep the Heart truly sat.As the floor surged beneath his boots, his mind ran through tactical options.‘If the Warden is suffocating her, he loses his Anchor.’The thought rose automatically, the first line of defense. Why kill the one thing keeping his facility stable?But as the descent accelerated, the counter-argument hit like a punch to the gut.The Warden wasn’t stabilizing the facility anymore. He was erasing evidence.If a Washington heir had breached the inner sanctum, the Gilded Cage was compromised. To the Syndicate, a dead legend was safer than a liberated one.“He’s liquidating the asset,” Tedmond hissed, voice echoing in the metallic shaft. “He’d rather lose the Anchor than let me have her.”Lottie had pointed to the reinforced steel door with its golden seal just before the doors closed.“The private lift. But Tedm
CHAPTER 660
The woman’s grin faltered. She had not been expecting that response from him.She looked into the raw, unyielding conviction in his eyes and realized she wasn’t negotiating with a boy playing hero; she was negotiating with the heir to a dynasty that didn’t know how to lose.“The sub-basement,” she whispered, her voice finally losing its edge. “Level Seven. It’s not on the maps. It’s a pressurized chamber behind the main server stack. The Warden calls it the Heart. She might be there, Tedmond. But the only way in is through the Warden’s private lift.”She paused, her amber eyes searching the silver mask as if trying to see the flesh beneath it.“I wasn’t sure you would actually find her here. It’s been years since I last saw Mill. Back then, I didn’t know who she really was. In this place, people are just numbers or shadows. No one knew what she truly looked like… she was kept in the deep dark.”She leaned closer to the glass, her expression turning uncharacteristically soft.“But now
CHAPTER 659
She stood and paced the small space of the sphere like a caged leopard.“You talk about wanting things as if desire is a currency,” she said. “But in this facility, we don’t deal in wants. We deal in trades. This is a negotiating room, whether you like it or not. If I give you Luna, I’m signing my own death warrant with the Warden. I need to know that whatever you offer in return is worth the risk of a slow execution.”Tedmond’s eyes narrowed. Above them, he could hear the faint sounds of Marek engaging the first wave of Enforcers, the muffled thuds of combat providing a grim rhythm to the conversation.“What would you like in exchange?” Tedmond asked, his voice dripping with icy patience.The woman laughed, sharp and delighted, and walked straight up to the glass, her amber eyes level with his.“It’s not every day you see a powerful family like yours groveling in the dirt,” she mused. “But don’t mistake your status for leverage here.”She paused, her lips curling into a smirk. “Ma
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