The Heiress He Underestimated novel Chapter 159

Finished

The morning after the meeting, the cliff house was a hive of quiet with purposeful activity. Frost had left before dawn with two of his team to personally escort Angela Reeves to a safe house in Colorado. Clara was holed up in the library with five different burner phones and a suspiciously large number of encrypted chat windows open, murmuring things like “off the record” and “deep background” to people who definitely weren’t journalists.

Drakonius was on a video call with his head of legal, a woman named Meredith who had the steely calm of someone who billed by the hour and enjoyed destroying empires before it even lunch. Elera could hear the phrases “SEC violation,” “RICO statute,” and “freeze order” floating down the hall.

She herself was in the kitchen, trying to remember how to make a toast. It was a simple task, a very normal task, and she was failing at it. The first two slices had vanished into smoke after she got distracted reading a new batch of Chimera Protocol data on her tablet. The third slice was currently charring while she stared at the toaster as if it held the secrets of the universe.

“You know, most people just push the lever down,” a voice said from the doorway.

Elera jumped, nearly dropping her tablet. Clara stood there, looking amused. “You have the ‘I’m solving a complex genetic puzzle‘ face on, but you’re just looking at bread.”

“I’m multitasking,” Elera said defensively, rescuing the blackened slice. “Brain work and… carb work.”

“Uh huh.” Clara came in and took the toast from her, tossing it in the trash. “Let me. You’re going to burn the house down, and Frost would never forgive me. He just installed new smoke detectors with ‘tactical silence override. And I’m not even kidding.”

Elera surrendered the toaster. “How’s the media campaign going?”

“Slowly. Like trying to direct a herd of cats through a minefield while blindfolded. But I’ve got two reporters from major outlets who are salivating over the ‘police corruption‘ angle. They’re digging. Once they find a thread, they’ll pull the whole sweater apart. Journalists are like that. They have a bloodhound’s nose for scandal and a bulldog’s grip once they sink their teeth in.”

Elera smiled. “You sound like you miss it.”

Clara shrugged, popping two new slices of bread into the toaster. “Sometimes. The chase and the puzzle. But then I remember the deadlines and the pay and the fact that my last editor thought ‘investigative journalism‘ meant reading Qwitter rumors out loud. This is better. The stakes are higher, and I get to work with my best friend who almost wants to set the kitchen on fire.”

They were interrupted by the sound of the front doorbell. It echoed through the house with a

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16:39 Fri, Apr 3 &

Chapter 159 A Surprise Visitor

surprising, solemn bong.

Everyone froze.

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Finished

Drakonius appeared in the kitchen doorway, his video call clearly ended. “Who uses the bell?”

“Salespeople?” Clara offered. “Really lost tourists?”

Frost’s second–in–command, Alex, appeared from the direction of the security office. He was a mountain of a man with a surprisingly gentle face. “It’s a woman and she is alone and we saw no car. She just… walked up to the gate. Says her name is Lyra Vex. She wants to speak with her brother.”

The atmosphere in the kitchen went from puzzled to tense in half a second. Drakonius’s expression closed off. Elera felt a chill that had nothing to do with the toast.

“She’s early,” Drakonius murmured. He’d known she would come, but not like this. Not ringing the front bell like a normal person.

“Should I let her in, sir?” Alex asked.

Drakonius looked at Elera. A question in his eyes.

“It’s your house,” Elera said quietly. “And your sister.”

He nodded to Alex. “Let her in. Bring her to the sunroom. I’ll meet her there.”

As Alex left, Drakonius ran a hand through his hair. “She’s not going to be pleasant.”

“You want me to come with you?” Elera asked.

“No,” he said, then softened. “Thank you. But this is between us. Sibling stuff. It’s… messy.”

“I’ll be in the lab if you need me.”

He leaned over and kissed her forehead, a quick, reassuring touch. Then he headed for the sunroom, squaring his shoulders like a man going into battle.

Clara watched him go. “Sibling stuff,” she repeated. “My brother and I once didn’t speak for a month because he ate the last Pop–Tart. I can’t imagine the level of drama when the family business is a multi–billion dollar pharmaceutical empire and you’re on opposite sides of a corporate war.”

Elera took the finally–perfect toast from the toaster. “Let’s hope they keep it to verbal sparring and don’t start throwing vases.”

“Oh, I don’t know. A good vase–throwing scene could be relieving. Expensive, but relieving.”

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