My Milf Conqueror System novel Chapter 169

Chapter 169: Only through

[Jake’s POV]

Helena Strauss walked like a ghost.

She made no sound on the imported marble, her dark gown absorbing the dim light of the corridor rather than reflecting it. She did not look back to see if I was following. She didn’t need to. The gravity of what we had just found—the empty wheelchair, the realization that Sofia had orchestrated her own capture weeks in advance—was a tether pulling me forward into the dark.

Darius fell into step beside me, his massive frame moving with terrifying silence. He didn’t ask questions. He just unbuttoned his suit jacket, freeing his arms for whatever violence was waiting at the end of this hallway.

"Nia," I whispered, tapping my earpiece. "Status."

Static hissed in my ear, sharp and biting.

"Nia?"

"—losing you, Jake—" Nia’s voice broke through a wall of interference, sounding distant and frantic. "—moving into a dead zone. The walls down there are lined with—"

A sharp crackle of white noise, and then dead silence.

I tapped the earpiece again. Nothing.

"Comms are down," I said softly.

Darius didn’t miss a beat. "Lead lining in the walls. Old estates used it for radiation shielding during the Cold War. Modern estates use it to block cellular and radio frequencies. Whatever is down here, they don’t want it broadcasting."

"Or they don’t want anyone calling for help," I replied.

Helena stopped at the end of the corridor.

We had descended two flights of stairs since leaving the gallery, moving far below the polished elegance of the Van der Meer auction. The air down here was different. It was freezing, smelling of ozone, sterile alcohol, and old dust. The Dutch stone had been replaced by reinforced concrete and seamless steel.

Before us stood a heavy vault door. No handle. No keyhole. Just a biometric scanner glowing with a faint, angry red light.

"The Ash Room does not meet in the music salon," Helena said, her voice echoing slightly in the concrete hall. She turned to face me, her expression unreadable. "The music salon is where they drink. It is where they socialize. It is where they pretend they are civilized."

She gestured to the vault door.

"This is where they work."

"And you have access?" I asked, my muscles tensing.

"I am the archivist, Mr. Hart," Helena said smoothly. "Someone has to catalog the sins."

She pressed her palm against the glass of the scanner. A green laser swept over her skin, followed by the heavy, mechanical thud of locking bolts retracting deep within the steel. The door hissed, breaking a pressurized seal, and swung outward.

The System flared to life in my vision, the blue text cutting through the gloom.

[Ding!]

[Warning: Extreme Danger Zone Entered.]

[Location: The Ash Vault.]

[Hostile Presence: Unknown.]

[System Recommendation: Draw a weapon.]

I didn’t have a weapon. I had a bespoke tuxedo and a rising sense of dread.

I stepped through the doorway, Darius right behind me.

The room was massive, easily the size of a basketball court, but it felt suffocatingly small. The walls were lined with floor-to-ceiling server racks, their cooling fans humming a low, monotonous drone. But it wasn’t the servers that made my blood run cold.

It was the center of the room.

A surgical theater had been constructed in the middle of the data center. High-intensity surgical lights hung from the ceiling, pointing down at a heavy, mechanized chair that looked like a cross between a dentist’s chair and an electric chair. Thick leather straps hung loosely from the armrests and ankles. IV stands flanked the chair, loaded with clear bags of unknown chemicals.

And on the floor, pooling near the base of the chair, was blood.

Not a lot. Just a few dark, smeared drops. But enough to make my heart stop.

"Sofia," I breathed, stepping toward the chair.

"She is not here," Helena said, stepping into the room behind us. The heavy vault door swung shut, sealing us inside with a definitive, echoing boom.

I spun around, my fists clenching. "Where is she, Helena? If this is a trap—"

"If this were a trap, Mr. Hart, you would already be dead," Helena interrupted, her voice sharp and commanding. She walked past me, completely ignoring Darius’s imposing presence, and approached a stainless steel medical tray resting near the chair.

She picked up a small, blood-stained scalpel and held it up to the light.

"The Ash Room does not just vote people out of power," Helena explained, her eyes fixed on the blade. "When a board member becomes a liability, they are brought here. The chemicals in those bags do not kill. They strip away inhibition. They strip away memory. They reduce a person to a highly suggestible state. The Ash Room extracts every password, every account number, every piece of leverage the victim possesses. And then, they induce a stroke."

A cold sweat broke out on the back of my neck. "A medical attestation."

"Exactly," Helena said, dropping the scalpel back onto the tray with a clatter. "A tragic, sudden medical emergency. The victim is declared incapacitated. The Ash Room assumes control of their assets legally, cleanly, and without a drop of suspicion."

I stared at the chair. I pictured Sofia strapped into it. I pictured Dr. Vale standing over her with a needle. The rage that flared inside me was so sudden and so violent it almost blinded me.

"But Sofia knew," I said, my voice dangerously quiet. "She knew about this room."

"Sofia Aldridge is the most terrifying woman I have ever met," Helena said, a faint trace of awe in her voice. "Yes. She knew. She discovered the existence of the Ash Vault three weeks ago. But she couldn’t prove it. The servers in this room are completely isolated from the outside world. No internet connection. No wireless access. The only way to get the data..."

"Is to plug a drive directly into the mainframe," Darius finished, his deep voice rumbling through the room. He was already moving toward the server racks, his eyes scanning the blinking lights.

"She let them take her," I realized, the sheer, horrifying brilliance of the plan washing over me. "She let Elena Markham and Dr. Vale kidnap her. She let them bring her to Van der Meer. She let them strap her into that chair."

"Because it was the only way to get inside the vault," Helena confirmed.

I walked over to the chair. I looked at the leather straps. One of the straps on the right armrest wasn’t unbuckled. It was cut. Sliced clean through.

"The ring," I whispered.

The platinum ring I had seen on her finger in the wheelchair. The one I had called ugly three years ago. It wasn’t just jewelry. It was a concealed blade.

"She cut herself loose," I said, tracing the edge of the severed leather. "That’s where the blood came from."

"She didn’t just cut herself loose," Helena said, walking over to the primary server terminal. She pointed to a small, black USB drive jutting out of the master console. A green light on the drive was blinking rapidly. "She initiated a complete data extraction. Every blackmail file, every illegal transaction, every recorded interrogation the Ash Room has conducted over the last decade. It’s all downloading onto that drive."

[Ding!]

[Massive Lore Unlocked: The Ash Ledger.]

[The ultimate weapon against the Vanguard shadow board.]

[Status: Download at 94%.]

"Where is she now?" I demanded, turning to Helena. "If she got out of the chair, where did she go?"

"I don’t know," Helena admitted, her composure finally showing a crack. "I was supposed to meet her here. I was supposed to help her walk out. But when I arrived, the room was empty, the drive was downloading, and the wheelchair was abandoned in the hall."

"Someone else found her," Darius said grimly. He drew his sidearm, the metallic click echoing loudly in the vault. "Someone interrupted the download."

"No," I said, shaking my head. I looked at the blinking green light on the USB drive. "If security found her, they would have pulled the drive. They would have stopped the breach. The drive is still here. Which means whoever took her doesn’t know what she was doing."

"Or," Helena said softly, "she led them away from the room to protect the data."

My chest tightened. Sofia had sacrificed herself twice. Once to get into the room, and again to make sure the evidence survived.

"How much longer on the download?" I asked, stepping up to the console.

"Two minutes," Helena said, checking the monitor. "But we don’t have two minutes."

As if on cue, a heavy, metallic thud echoed from the vault door.

Then another.

Someone was trying to get in.

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