The Heiress He Underestimated novel Chapter 185

Chapter 185 The Double Agent

Finished

“Not a spy! Not at first. He just wanted… updates. General health reports. Was Mr. Vex declining? How fast? Basic stuff. I thought… I thought it was just business. Rival companies snooping. It felt dirty, but it wasn’t… it wasn’t murder.” The word hung in the air, heavy and ugly. “When you arrived, Mrs. Vex, and started the new protocol… the instructions changed. He wanted me to… to alter the data. To make the treatment look less effective. To introduce noise into the results. To make you doubt your own work.”

Elera’s mind was racing, recalculating everything. The dips in the data. The slower–than–expected progress. It was all fabricated. Which meant…

“The Chimera Protocol is working better than we thought,” she said aloud, the clinical part of her brain surging ahead of the betrayal, “The real data, the unaltered data… Drakonius is closer to cured than our models showed.”

Simon nodded miserably. “Yes. The integration is nearly ninety percent complete. The neural regeneration is… it’s miraculous. What you’ve done… it’s historic. And I’ve been hiding it.”

“Why?” The question came from the doorway.

Drakonius stood there, leaning on his cane, dressed in pajamas and a robe. His face was very calm, but his eyes… his eyes were devastated. Simon had been more than an employee. He’d been a constant through years of illness. A steady hand in the dark. To find that hand had been holding a knife…

“Mr. Vex,” Simon breathed, tears welling in his eyes. “I am so… so sorry. I was weak and I was scared. He threatened to ruin me. And I let him.”

“You let him use you to risk my life,” Drakonius said, his voice quiet, deadly. “You let him sabotage the one thing that was working. You lied to Elera. You lied to me for two years.”

“I didn’t know about the other things!” Simon pleaded, his voice breaking. “The accidents, the… the deaths. I thought it was just corporate espionage! Dirty money! I didn’t know he was a killer! When I realized… when I saw the news about the Lyros family… I wanted to stop. But it was too late. He had me. He said if I stopped sending data, or if I told you, he’d release the malpractice proof and… and he implied he’d hurt my sister. She’s all I have left.”

The room was silent, thick with the weight of his confession. Frost looked ready to throw Simon through a window. Elera felt a confusing mix of fury and pity. Drakonius just looked tired. So terribly tired.

“What do we do with him?” Frost asked, the question directed at Drakonius and Elera. “Police would be… messy. He knows everything. Treatment protocols, security layouts and your schedules.”

“We don’t call the police,” Elera said, her mind clicking into a cold, clear strategy. She looked at Simon, who flinched under her gaze. “You want to make this right?”

“More than anything,” he whispered.

“Good. Then you’re going to keep sending data to Kieran.”

Simon blinked. Frost’s eyebrows shot up. Drakonius tilted his head, understanding dawning in his eyes.

“We’re going to give him exactly what he wants,” Elera continued, a sharp, dangerous smile touching her lips. “But we’re going to control the story now. You’re going to tell him the Chimera Protocol is failing. Catastrophically. That Drakonius is experiencing systemic rejection. That his organs are beginning to shut down. That I’m desperate, trying everything, but it’s a matter of weeks. Days, even.”

15:39 Mon, Apr 13 0

Chapter 185 The Double Agent

Simon stared at her. “You want me to lie to him.”

“You’ve had practice,” Frost muttered.

Finished

“We feed him a story of rapid, irreversible decline,” Elera went on, ignoring Frost. “We make him think his plan is working. That his last obstacle is crumbling. A desperate, dying man is a predictable man. A victorious, greedy man is a careless man. He’ll make a mistake. And we’ll be waiting.”

Drakonius nodded slowly. “He’ll get overconfident. He might even try to move against us directly, thinking we’re weak.”

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