The Heiress He Underestimated novel Chapter 202

The ride to the cliff house was silent and suffocating. Drakonius sat stiffly, his eyes closed, but Elera could. see the muscle in his jaw working. The tremor in his hand had spread to a slight shake in his shoulder. The adrenaline from the rescue was crashing, and his body was protesting the abuse.

“Your medication,” she said softly, reaching for the small medical kit bolted to the van wall.

“Not now,” he said through gritted teeth. “It’ll make me sluggish. I need to be clear.”

“You need to not have a seizure or go into a neurogenic shock,” she shot back, her doctor’s instinct overriding everything else. She prepped a small, fast–acting stabilizer. “This will help with the tremor and won’t dull you. Just hold still.”

He didn’t argue. He let her inject the clear liquid into his arm, his skin pale under the van’s dim light. Xan watched from the other side, his expression unreadable.

“He’s going to want to talk,” Xan said after a few minutes. “That’s his favorite part. The monologue. He’ll want to explain how brilliant he is, how he outsmarted you. He’ll want to see the look on your face when he tells you what he’s about to do.”

“Then we don’t let him talk,” Lin grunted from the driver’s seat.

“We have to,” Elera said, capping the syringe. Her hands were steady, a miracle. “We need to know what he’s done. What he’s doing. If he’s planted something, if he’s… if he’s already destroyed the cultures….” She couldn’t finish the sentence.

The stabilizer worked quickly. The visible tremor in Drakonius subsided. He opened his eyes, took a deep breath, and looked at Elera. “We get the data drives first. The physical backups. Whatever happens, we save the research.”

She nodded. That was the mission. Not capturing Kieran. Not revenge but salvation of the work, of the future, of Drakonius himself.

They approached the cliff house from the back, through the dense pine forest. Lin killed the headlights a quarter mile out, navigating by moonlight and memory. The house loomed ahead, a dark shape against the starry sky. No lights shone from within. No security lamps lit the perimeter. It was a tomb.

Lin parked the van deep in the trees. They got out, the cold night air biting through their clothes. Elera pulled out a small tablet, linking to the house’s security system. It was offline. Not just disabled. Scrambled.

“He used an EMP generator, a small one,” she whispered, her breath making little clouds. “Just enough to fry the electronics at the point of entry. He’s inside.”

Drakonius had a small pistol in his hand, held low. Lin had a larger one. Xan, to Elera’s surprise, pulled a compact taser from his pocket. “I’m not shooting anyone,” he muttered. “But I’m not going in empty- handed either.”

They moved to the kitchen entrance, the one closest to the lab wing. The door was unlocked. It swung open silently.

The house was dark and dead quiet. The usual hum of the climate control, the soft whir of servers, the faint beep of the security panel… all gone. The silence was a physical presence, heavy and wrong. They could

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13:06 Thu, Apr 16 MOD.

Chapter 202 Darkened Wires

smell it too–the sharp, acrid scent of ozone and burnt plastic from fried circuitry.

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Finished

Lin took point, moving with a silent predatory grace. Drakonius followed, his steps careful but sure. Eleral and Xan brought up the rear. Every shadow in the familiar hallway seemed menacing. The portrait of Drakonius’s grandfather seemed to glare down at them accusingly.

They reached the junction. To the left, the residential wing. To the right, the hallway that led to the library, the sunroom, and the sealed door to the lab.

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