My Milf Conqueror System novel Chapter 114

Chapter 114: The Feral King

[Ethan’s POV]

I kept the flashlight beam pinned to the floor, tracking the smeared crimson trail across the cracked concrete.

"Stay exactly two steps behind me," I told Claire, my voice barely a whisper over the sound of the rain drumming against the facility’s rusted tin roof. "If we make contact, you drop to the floor and you stay behind cover. Do not try to negotiate. Do not try to talk."

"I’m not leaving this," Claire said.

I glanced back. She was rapidly shoving Jake’s manic, scribbled notebooks and the battered laptop into her reinforced briefcase. Her hands were shaking, but her movements were efficient and precise.

"Claire, leave it. It’s dead weight."

"It’s his mind, Ethan," she shot back, her eyes flashing with a fierce, protective intensity. She snapped the briefcase shut and locked it. "Whatever he’s been doing for the last two years, whatever he’s been trying to rebuild, it’s in these pages. I will manage the data. You will manage the guns. Now keep moving."

I didn’t argue. She was right. If Jake’s intellect was truly fractured, those notebooks might be the only map we had to put the pieces back together.

I turned back to the blood trail. It led away from the makeshift workstation, weaving through a labyrinth of massive, decaying industrial washing machines. The metallic husks loomed in the dark like the skeletons of dead giants. Every dripping pipe, every gust of wind rattling the loose corrugated siding, sounded like a footstep.

My grip on the Glock was white-knuckled.

...

Flashback - Fourteen Months Ago

The air in the Aegis Solutions kill-house was thick with the smell of cordite and sweat.

I was leaning against a plywood wall, my chest heaving, an empty training pistol dangling from my hand. I had just cleared three rooms of pop-up targets, double-tapping each one in the chest and head. I was getting faster. I was getting lethal.

Darius walked through the splintered doorway, his massive frame moving with terrifying silence. He looked at the targets, then looked at me.

"Your mechanics are good," Darius rumbled, his voice echoing in the plywood hallway. "Your aim is steady. But you’re training to fight soldiers, Ethan. You’re training to fight men who think like you do."

"Isabella Vane uses private military contractors," I panted, wiping sweat from my eyes. "I am training to fight soldiers."

"Isabella Vane uses soldiers to hold territory," Darius corrected, stepping closer. "But if you find Jake... you won’t be fighting soldiers. You’ll be fighting whatever is hunting him in the dark. And you might have to fight Jake himself."

I frowned, lowering the training weapon. "What the hell does that mean? Jake is my best friend. He’s our boss."

"Jake was a king," Darius said softly, his dark eyes boring into mine. "He had money, he had leverage, and he had a mind that could out-think supercomputers. But what happens when you strip a king of his crown? What happens when you take away his network, his wealth, and his sanity?"

I didn’t have an answer.

"You get an animal," Darius said, his voice dropping to a grim whisper. "A man who has lost everything doesn’t fight with strategy, Ethan. He fights with pure, unadulterated survival instinct. He fights like a cornered wolf. If you find him, and his mind is gone, he won’t see you as a friend. He’ll see you as a threat. And a feral Jake Hart is the most dangerous thing on this planet."

...

Present Time

The blood trail ended abruptly at a heavy, reinforced steel door leading to the facility’s old boiler room. The door was slightly ajar.

I held up a fist, signaling Claire to stop. She crouched behind a rusted laundry cart, clutching her briefcase to her chest.

I approached the door, pressing my back against the damp brick wall. I listened.

Nothing. Just the steady drip-drip-drip of water leaking from the ceiling, and a low, wet sound that sounded like someone struggling to breathe.

I took a breath, pivoted around the doorframe, and swept the room with my flashlight and the barrel of my Glock.

The boiler room was a cavernous space filled with massive, rusted iron tanks and a maze of thick pipes. But it wasn’t empty.

"Clear," I whispered, my voice tight.

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