The Heiress He Underestimated novel Chapter 203

Chapter 203 Parasite

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Finished

Drakonius looked at Elera, a question in his eyes. Your call.

This was her domain. Her battle. She took a deep, silent breath and nodded. They moved to the lab door.

It was scaled, but the magnetic lock was dead from the EMP. Drakonius put his hand on the handle, looked at Elera and Xan one last time, and pushed it open.

The lab was a scene of methodical, chilling vandalism.

Monitors were dark, their screens spiderwebbed with cracks. A centrifuge lay on its side, its contents a colorful, ruined puddle on the floor. Drawers were pulled out, their contents–pipettes, petri dishes, sterile wraps–strewn everywhere like metallic confetti.

And in the center of it all, standing calmly at the main workbench, was Kieran Nethys.

He held a small, crystalline vial up to the light of a single, battery–powered lantern he’d placed on the counter. Inside the vial, a solution the color of pale honey swirled gently. It was beautiful. It was the culmination of six months of relentless work. The final stabilized synthesis of the Chimera Protocol. The

cure.

He didn’t look surprised to see them. He looked… pleased.

“There you are,” he said, his voice conversational, as if they’d just arrived for a scheduled dinner. “I was wondering how long the rescue would take. Frost is efficient, I’ll give him that.” His eyes swept over them, lingering on Xan with a flicker of disgust. “And you brought the traitor. How quaint.”

“Put it down, Father,” Elera said. Her voice didn’t shake. It was low, flat, and carried in the ruined lab.

“Or what?” Kieran smiled, a thin, lifeless stretch of his lips. “You’ll call the police? Oh, wait. You can’t. The system is down. You’ll have your husband shoot me? He looks like he’s about to fall over. And even if he did, this little vial…” He gave it a gentle shake. “…is very, very fragile. One drop on this dirty floor, and all this brilliance is just a sticky spot. All his hope… gone.”

Drakonius had his gun raised, but his aim wavered slightly. The stress was eating at him, the medication only a temporary dam against the flood.

“What do you want, Kieran?” Drakonius asked, his voice strained.

“What I’ve always wanted,” Kieran sighed, as if explaining something simple to a child. “What is mine. Respect. Control and Legacy.” He looked at Elera. “You were supposed to be my legacy. My greatest creation. Beautiful, connected and very obedient. A key to unlock every door I couldn’t open myself. But you grew thorns. You hid your teeth. You became your own… thing.” He said the word with distaste.

“I’m a person,” Elera said, taking a step forward. “Not a thing. Not a key.”

“A person?” Kieran laughed, a dry, hacking sound. “People are messy. People have feelings. They fall in love with dying men. They try to save people. It’s a weakness, Elera. The only true sin in this world is weakness. And you were always so weak. Needing your mother’s love. Needing my approval. Needing to play doctor and save this broken shell of a man.” He gestured dismissively at Drakonius.

“He’s worth a hundred of you,” Elera spat, her calm cracking.

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13:06 Thu, Apr 16 MOD.

Chapter 203 Parasite

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Finished

“Is he?” Kieran’s eyes gleamed in the lantern light. “He’s a dead man walking, propped up by your little science project. And you… you could have had everything. The Vex fortune, the social power, a husband you could actually control. We could have been unstoppable. Instead, you choose this? A hiding life in a glass box, fighting a war you can’t win?”

“You killed people,” Xan’s voice cut through the tension. He was staring at Kieran with a hatred so pure it was like another light in the room. “You killed Sarah’s parents. You framed her. You had a detective murdered.”

Kieran finally looked fully at Xan, his expression one of bored disappointment. “And you finally grew a spine. Too little, too late. Those people were in my way. The Lyros family with their moralizing, refusing a perfectly good merger. The detective who couldn’t take a hint. They were obstacles. You remove obstacles. That’s not evil, Xan. That’s gardening.”

The casual cruelty of it took Elera’s breath away. She had always known he was cold, greedy, manipulative. But hearing him equate murder to weeding a flowerbed… it revealed the void where his soul should have been.

“You’re a monster,” she whispered.

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