Free Web NovelChapter 30: Chapter 29 The Illusion of Freedom
"Running away without saying goodbye, Miss Brenner?"
My entire body locked.
The gates behind me continued sliding open.
Freedom.
It was right there.
Close enough to touch.
Yet somehow... farther away than ever.
Very slowly, I turned around.
Laziel Monroe stood several feet away, one hand tucked casually into his pocket. The moonlight hit the sharp angles of his face, making him look less like a man and more like a merciless statue.
He didn’t look angry. There were no veins popping in his neck, no murderous glare. He just looked... bored.
His dark eyes drifted down to Anastelle, watching her chest rise and fall as she slept peacefully through the nightmare. Then, those icy eyes flicked back up to mine.
"Cold night for traveling," he said smoothly.
I couldn’t bring myself to answer.
My arms instinctively tightened around my daughter.
If he had shouted, I could have handled it. If he had called me a bitch or a thief, I would have known how to fight back. But this quiet, casual observation? It was fucking terrifying.
Silence stretched between us.
Then...
Movement.
Out of the corner of my eye, shadows shifted.
One man stepped out from behind the fountain.
Another emerged from the hedge bordering the driveway.
Two more appeared beside the garage.
Then another.
And another.
Within seconds, armed security surrounded the courtyard without saying a single word.
None of it was a security lapse. This dickhead had ordered his men to step back. He had intentionally given me the illusion of freedom just to watch me run like a rat in a maze. He wanted to see exactly how far I’d go.
He slowly walked toward me until only a few feet separated us.
"You disappointed me," he murmured.
"I can’t live like a prisoner here," I snapped, trying to inject some venom into my voice to hide the fact that I was shaking. "You forced us into this house. You ruined my life—"
"Stealing is such a crude habit, Miss Brenner."
The words cut me off instantly.
He knew about the folder.
The missing corridor footage hadn’t fooled him for a second. He knew I was the only one who had been in that office. He knew the files were gone, and he knew exactly whose hands had touched them.
Laziel tilted his head, his gaze boring straight into my skull, stripping away every defense I had left.
"Did you read it?" he asked quietly.
If I admitted I read it, I was dead. If he knew I possessed the secrets in that background file, he would never let me see the light of day again. I had to commit. I had to look this multi-billionaire monster in the eyes and deliver the biggest performance of my life.
I forced my chin up. "No."
Laziel didn’t blink. He just studied me, his eyes tracking the subtle movement of my lips, the pulse leaping in my neck. He knew I was lying. It was written all over his smug, arrogant face.
Then, he quietly said, "Good."
I blinked, completely thrown off. Good? What the fuck did that mean?
Before I could even process the whiplash, Laziel flicked his wrist, gesturing back toward the mansion behind us.
"Go back to bed," he ordered flatly.
"What?" The word slipped out before I could stop it. I stared at him, utterly bewildered. "Laziel, I just tried to escape your estate with a stolen file. You’re just... letting me go back to my room?"
"Tomorrow will be exhausting," he replied, turning his back to me as if I were nothing more than an annoying interruption to his evening. "Don’t make me repeat myself, Mireya."
I stood there at the open gates, freedom literally five feet away, but it might as well have been across an ocean. The dozen guards stood like statues, waiting. The invisible chains around my ankles felt tighter than cuffs. Defeated, terrified, and entirely confused, I turned around and walked back toward the mansion.
...
Laziel stood on the path, watching the front doors click shut behind her.
The security chief stepped out from the shadows, his eyes locked on the path Mireya had just taken.
"Should we retrieve the file from her room, sir?" the chief asked quietly. "We know exactly where she’s keeping it."
"No," Laziel replied.
The chief blinked, completely caught off guard. "Sir? With all due respect, that document contains—"
"If she read it, she’ll panic," Laziel cut him off. "And panicked people make mistakes. Let her keep it. Let her think she has leverage."
He pulled a cigarette case from his pocket, lighting one with a steady hand. The small flame illuminated the satisfaction on his face.
"I don’t need to strip her of her cards," Laziel murmured into the dark, watching the smoke drift into the fog. "I want to watch her play them."
....
Back in NYC.
The floor-to-ceiling glass of the penthouse overlooked the glittering Manhattan skyline, but Helix Monroe didn’t give a shit about the view.
Smash.
The whiskey glass shattered against the floor. Helix was completely wasted, his tie undone, his white shirt stained with sweat and alcohol.
On the coffee table lay the fertility report from the clinic.
Natural conception: Extremely unlikely. Count: Virtually nonexistent.
"Lying bastards," Helix growled to the empty room. "Every single one of them. Chloé is the broken one. That bitch couldn’t carry a child if her life depended on it."
He grabbed the paper, and tore it into shreds. He refused to accept it. He was a Monroe. He was the standard. The idea that his own body was failing him—that he was the reason his bloodline was dead in the water—was a pill he would never swallow.
But Chloé’s words kept clawing at his brain, dragging him down into a pit of desperation. If he didn’t produce an heir within the year, the family succession line would default entirely to Laziel. His older brother would inherit the entire empire, leaving Helix with nothing but a trust fund and a reputation as an impotent loser.
He grabbed his phone off the table, punching in his assistant’s number. It was past two in the morning, but he didn’t give a fuck.
"Sir?" her groggy voice came through the line.
"The specialist we saw today is an idiot," Helix ordered, his voice dangerously low, slurring slightly. "Fire him. Blacklist him from every medical board in New York."
"Mr. Monroe, he’s the top specialist in—"
"I don’t give a shit!" Helix screamed into the phone, slamming his fist against the sofa. "Get me every fertility specialist in Europe. The real ones. The ones who don’t hide behind percentages. Line them up. Milan, London, Paris. I want appointments booked by tomorrow morning."
He went cold.
"Find me a doctor who can fix this," Helix hissed, "or I will burn the entire department to the ground."
