The Heiress He Underestimated novel Chapter 189

Chapter 189 Family Is A Loaded Gun

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Finished

Kieran Nethys sat in his favorite leather chair in his favorite study. The room felt different now, colder now. The polished wood, the expensive art, the silent shelves of books that he’d never read–it all felt like a set. A stage for a performance that was rapidly closing to an empty house.

His phone, face up on the desk, was a flat, black rectangle of bad news. The stock ticker for his remaining holdings was a sea of red. The cascade had started with Elera’s reveal, accelerated with whispers about the SEC investigation, and turned into a full–blown avalanche after that little weasel Andrew Webb’s files had somehow leaked to the press. Not all of them, just enough. A taste. A financial footnote linking him to Meridian Holdings. A blurred screenshot of a suspicious transfer. The vultures were circling, and they had good noses.

His so–called friends weren’t returning calls. His board was scheduling “emergency meetings” he wasn’t invited to. The story had flipped, utterly and completely. He was no longer the sympathetic, wronged father. He was now the shady businessman. The possible culprit. The whispers weren’t about his daughter’s cruelty anymore. They were about his.

And the final, humiliating insult: the payment for the mercenaries. He’d sent it to the offshore account, his stomach churning with a mix of dread and grim satisfaction. The job was done. The last obstacle, that dying thorn in his side, Drakonius Vex, was removed. He’d waited for the confirmation message, the one that would signal it was time to move on Elera in her vulnerable, grieving state.

The confirmation had come. “Target eliminated. Awaiting extraction instructions.”

He’d let out a breath he felt like he’d been holding for weeks. Good. Finally, something had gone right.

But the instructions he’d sent for the payment drop… there had been no reply. No acknowledgement. Radio silence for twelve hours. A cold, greasy feeling had started to uncoil in his gut. Professional killers always replied, they confirmed but this silence was… amateur. Or it was a trap.

He’d tried to call the blind–number contact. Disconnected.

That’s when the real panic set in. A cold, sinking type. It was the panic that told him he was not the puppet master. He was the one with strings attached, and someone had just taken the scissors to them.

He was running out of moves. Out of money that couldn’t be frozen, out of allies and out of time.

He stared at a small, silver–framed photo on his desk. It was of his mother, Eleanor, the formidable woman who’d started the foundation. She looked out of the photograph with sharp, intelligent eyes that seemed to see right through him. You are a disappointment, those eyes said. You were given a legacy, and you turned it into a weapon.

“Oh, shut up,” he muttered to the photo, turning it face down. He didn’t need a ghost judging him. He needed a solution.

Elera. It always came back to Elera. His brilliant, infuriating daughter who had somehow become the anvil upon which his world was being smashed. She had everything now. The companies, the public adoration, the powerful husband (or recently widowed status, which was even better for sympathy). She was sitting in her cliffside fortress, probably already spending his money.

He couldn’t get to her directly. Vex’s security was a legend. Her head of security Frost was a ghost who haunted the perimeter. He couldn’t attack her businesses head–on; they were too strong now, buoyed by her celebrity and that massive cash infusion.

He needed leverage. Something she cared about more than stock prices or public image. Something that

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16:25 Tue, Apr 14

Chapter 189 Family Is A Loaded Gun

would make her fold.

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