The Heiress He Underestimated novel Chapter 199

The Heiress He Underestimated

Chapter 199 A Perfect Extraction

A new kind of tension filled the van. The clean extraction was unraveling.

Finished

Then Clara spoke up. “Okay, think. He’s a lazy rich guy who hates getting his hands dirty, right? He wouldn’t want to have to drive down here in the middle of the night to let himself in if he forgot the code. There has to be a manual override somewhere outside. For the delivery guys.”

Xan snapped his fingers. “She’s right. There’s always an override. A keybox. Usually on the wall to the left of the big doors, about head height. It looks like a little metal cabinet.”

“Silent,” Frost ordered. “You’re still at the sewer access. Can you get to the exterior of the loading bay?”

A new voice, deep and calm. “Silent here. Affirmative. I have a visual on the bay doors. I see a small metal box on the left wall.”

“Can you open it?”

A pause. They heard the faint sound of metal scraping. “It’s a simple combination lock. Four digits.”

“Oracle,” Frost said. “What’s the combination?”

Xan went pale. “I… I don’t know. He never gave me that. That’s the kind of thing he’d keep for himself.”

They were so close. The door was right there, and a simple four–digit lock was going to stop them.

Elera’s mind raced. Kieran. His passwords, his pins. He was predictable in his vanity. She typed furiously, pulling up everything she had on him. His corporate login password: Nethys1985 – the year he took over the company. His personal email password: KingKieranl. His bank PIN, recovered from an old phishing attempt she’d once intercepted: 7193.

“Try seven–one–nine–three,” she said into the mic.

They heard Silent’s quiet grunt as he dialed the numbers. A click. “Negative. No good.”

“Try one–nine–eight–five,” Xan suggested.

Another click. “Negative.”

“He uses his birthday for nothing.” Elera muttered, thinking out loud. “He thinks that’s for common people. He uses… anniversaries of his victories.” Her eyes scanned the data. The date the Valdris deal was finalizad The date he ousted a rival from the board. The date…

Her blood went cold.

“Try zero–six–one–one,” she said, her voice hollow.

“What is that?” Drakonius asked softly.

dill

“The day my mother left him. The only date that ever truly beat him. He’s obsessed with it. He mentions it in every drunken rant.”

They heard the dial turn. 0… 6… 1… 1.

13:05 Thu, Apr 16 R

Chapter 199 A Perfect Extraction

A loud, satisfying clunk echoed through Frost’s mic.

“Door override disengaged,” Silent reported. “I can hear the mechanism unlocking from out here.”

“Open it,” Frost ordered.

Finished

A grinding sound filled the audio feed as the heavy loading bay door began to roll upward. On the thermal, a new, cool slice of the outside night appeared.

“Move, move, move!” Frost commanded, but his voice was still controlled, quiet.

The cluster of dots surged forward, out of the building, into the alley. The van’s driver, Lin, started the engine. Thirty seconds later, the side door slid open, and Frost’s team poured in, a wave of cool night air and tension.

In the middle of them, wrapped in Arrow’s tactical jacket, was Margaret Nethys.

She looked small, older than Elera remembered, her elegant silver hair mussed, her eyes wide with shock. But when she saw Elera, those eyes filled with tears of pure, unadulterated relief.

“Oh, my darling girl,” she breathed.

Elera was across the van in a second, wrapping her aunt in a hug so tight it squeezed the air from both of them. Margaret smelled of fear and old factory dust, but underneath it was her familiar scent of lavender powder and lemon verbena. Elera didn’t realize she was crying until she felt the tears on her own cheeks.

“You’re safe, Aunt Margaret. You’re safe. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry he did this.”

“Shhh, shhh,” Margaret soothed, patting her back with trembling hands. “You came. You clever, brave girl. You came for me.”

The van was moving, pulling away smoothly, leaving the factory district behind. Frost and his team were already doing post–op checks, talking in low voices. Clara was beaming, her professional composure broken by a grin so wide it looked like it hurt.

“Scribe to all stations,” she said into her mic, unable to keep the triumph out of her voice. “Dove is secure. Repeat, Dove is secure. All teams are wheels–up and clear. Good job, everyone.”

They had done it. Against the odds, against Kieran’s traps, they had gotten her out clean.

The mood in the van shifted. The terrible tension bled away, replaced by a giddy, exhausted sense of victory. Margaret was handed a bottle of water, which she drank from with shaking hands. Arrow offered her a protein bar, which she accepted with the graciousness of someone at a tea party.

“Thank you, young man. It’s just what I needed.”

Arrow, a mountain of a man who could probably bend steel with his eyebrows, blushed under his balaclava. “You’re welcome, ma’am.”