The Billionaire's True Heiress From Fake Jewel to Real Crown novel Chapter 1678

A rare, faint smile touched Dane's lips. “She is.”

Having dedicated his entire life to national security, Raymond had never married or had children, completely failing to grasp the romantic entanglements of the youth.

But he knew Dane had always been ruthlessly cold and pragmatic. To see the icy billionaire wrapped around a girl's finger was utterly shocking.

Then again, that was none of his business.

“Even if she's your fiancée, I'm not going easy on her!” Raymond warned.

Dane's absolute faith in Claire remained unshaken. “She doesn't need your charity.”

Raymond scoffed. Young love was entirely blind, and he wasn't about to fall for the hype.

True to his word, Raymond unleashed a brutal, multi-layered encryption test—the exact same firewall he used to break his elite apprentices.

To his absolute shock, Claire obliterated the defenses in record time.

Raymond's attitude instantly did a violent one-eighty.

“Claire, my dear! I hear you're pre-med. Have you ever considered changing your major?”

“Never,” Claire shut him down flawlessly.

Raymond was stunned.

He desperately wanted to argue, but the mission took precedence.

He handed over the highly secured flash drive and pulled up the log of their failed decryption attempts.

He had attempted to bypass it once and failed. He didn't dare try again, as three failed attempts would trigger a total wipe.

The drive was laced with a lethal self-destruct virus.

“There are two attempts left. I wanted to run another script, but...”

Raymond's voice trailed off. He hated admitting it, but his brilliant mind simply couldn't keep up with the cutting-edge tech of the new generation.

He had wanted his top student to take the second attempt, but command had vetoed it.

They had recruited Claire because she had a proven track record of dismantling this exact type of architecture.

Watching Claire's elegant coding style had sharply reminded Raymond of 'S', an elusive international hacker who had taken the dark web by storm a few years ago.

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