The Heiress He Underestimated novel Chapter 200

Chapter 200 Burning The Roots

Finisher

Xan slumped back in his chair, running a hand over his face. He looked drained, but there was a light in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. He’d helped. He’d been useful. For the first time in years, he’d been on the right side of something.

Drakonius was watching Elera and her aunt, a softness in his gaze. Then his eyes met Frost’s. The two men gave each other a nod. Professional respect. A job well done.

“We should head straight to the Montana property,” Frost said, breaking the quiet celebration. “Get Margaret settled and under permanent guard. Kieran will be furious when he realizes she’s gone.”

Elera nodded, still holding her aunt’s hand. “Yes. Straight there.” She looked at Margaret. “We have a lovely place in the mountains. You can rest. You’ll be safe.”

Margaret smiled, a fragile but real thing. “Anywhere but that horrid room. He just talked and talked. About his plans, about how he was going to finally win. It was… sad, really.”

Something about the way she said it made Elera’s skin prickle. “What did he say, exactly?”

“Oh, just more of his nonsense. How he was going to control you, how this was the final move. He kept checking his phone, smiling at it. Like he was waiting for good news.” She shook her head. “The only thing he seemed really… excited about was that he wouldn’t have to wait for the money transfers. He said something about ‘going to the source‘ and ‘burning the roots.’ I thought he was just being dramatic.”

Elera’s blood, so warm with relief, turned to ice in her veins.

Going to the source. Burning the roots.

She looked at Drakonius. His face had gone pale, the softness replaced by dawning horror. They were thinking the same thing.

The money. The documents. The press conference. It was all a giant, glittering distraction.

“He knew,” Elera whispered, the words tasting like ash. “He knew we wouldn’t pay. He knew we’d come for her.”

“It was a feint,” Drakonius said, his voice rough. “He pulled our eyes here. To the factory. To the rescue.”

Xan stood up, his chair scraping. “He wanted us focused on this. All of us. Frost, the team, you, me. He wanted the cliff house empty.”

Empty.

The word hung in the air, a death sentence.

Elera’s lab. The Chimera Protocol. The primary research. The only copies of the stabilized gene sequences. The synthesized enzymes that were keeping Drakonius alive. All of it. In the one place they thought was an impenetrable fortress.

But a fortress is only impenetrable if someone is there to defend it.

They had left it. They had taken everyone–Frost, his best men, Elera, Drakonius, even Clara and Xan.

13:05 Thu, Apr 16 MO

Chapter 200 Buming The Roots

They’d left Simon and a skeleton staff. Against Kieran Nethys, who was not just angry, but desperate, and now, apparently, thinking clearly.

“Lin!” Drakonius barked, his voice cutting through the van. “Turn the van around! Now! Maximum speed! Get us home!”

The driver didn’t question. The van swerved, tires squealing, executing a sharp U–turn that threw them all against the walls. The celebration was over, dead and buried.

“Frost, call the house,” Elera ordered, her voice shaking. “Get Simon. Now.”

Frost already had his satellite phone out, dialing. They all listened, the van filled with nothing but the roar of the engine and the frantic beating of their own hearts.

The phone rang. And rang. And rang.

No answer.

Frost tried again. And again.

Nothing.

He tried the landline. The security desk. The kitchen. Every extension.

Silence.

The cliff house, their sanctuary, had gone dark.

“He’s there,” Xan said, and it wasn’t a guess. It was a certainty. “He’s been there the whole time. Watching us run around the city playing hero while he walked right into your home!”

Elera felt a scream building in her throat, a raw, silent thing made of pure terror. Not for herself or for her work but for Drakonius’s future. For the life they had built in that lab, the life she had fought so hard to

save.

She had outsmarted her father in business, in society, in the media. She had built walls of money and secrets and power.

And he had simply waited for her to leave the door unlocked.

The van sped through the night, a metal bullet aimed at the heart of a disaster. The successful rescue of Margaret felt like a million years ago, a sweet, distant dream. All that was left was the chilling reality, spoken in Clara’s suddenly small, horrified voice as she stared at the blank communications panel.

“The roots,” she echoed. “He’s not after the fruit. He’s after the whole tree.”

Frost, his face a mask of cold fury, checked the magazine in his pistol with a sharp, final chick.

“He’s not burning anything,” Frost said, his voice low and deadly. “Not on my watch.”

But they were still twenty minutes away. And in the world they lived in, twenty minutes was more than enough time for a man like Kieran Nethys to burn down the world.