The Heiress He Underestimated novel Chapter 204

Chapter 204 If I Can’t Have It All

39

Finished

“I’m a realist!” he snapped, the placid mask slipping for a second. “The world is a jungle. The strong take. The weak… they get taken. They get put in institutions, or they get married off to pay debts, or they die in car crashes nobody asks too many questions about.” He steadied himself, holding the vial up again. “And now, I’m taking this. The last piece of the puzzle. The one thing you love more than you ever loved me. Your… work.”

He moved towards a large sink at the side of the lab, the vial held over the drain.

“Don’t!” Drakonius’s shout was raw with panic.

“What will you give me for it?” Kieran asked, pausing. “Your shares in Vex Industries? Signed over to me, right now. Your silence about the past? A written statement that I’m a wonderful father and all those stories are lies spread by jealous rivals?”

Elera looked at the vial, then at Drakonius’s pale, desperate face, then at her father’s triumphant one. This was his final move. Not to kill them, but to make them choose. To make them surrender everything to save the one thing that mattered.

She felt something settle inside her. A cold, clear certainty.

“No,” she said.

The room went still.

“What?” Kieran asked, the smile fading.

“I said no.” Elera took another step forward. She wasn’t looking at the vial anymore. She was looking at him. At the man who had haunted her whole life. “You don’t get a deal. You don’t get to win. You poured my mother’s love out like spoiled milk and told me it was my fault for being thirsty. You sold me to Xan like a piece of furniture to settle a debt. You stole from your own mother’s charity. You murdered two people and ruined their daughter’s life to make a few million dollars. You kidnapped your own sister to try to blackmail me. And now you stand in my lab, holding the product of my mind and my work, and you think you’re the strong one?”

Her voice rose, not in a scream, but in a clear, carrying pronouncement that echoed off the glass and steel.

“You’re not strong, Father. You’re a parasite. You don’t build anything. You don’t create anything. You don’t love anything. You just cling to other people’s strength and try to suck them dry. And when they resist, you break them. That’s not strength. That’s the weakest thing in the world.”

Kieran’s face was turning an ugly purple. “You ungrateful little-”

“I am grateful,” Elera cut him off, her words coming faster now. “I’m grateful I got my mother’s heart and not your emptiness. I’m grateful I was smart enough to build my own life where you couldn’t reach it. I’m grateful I found a man who sees my strength instead of being threatened by it. And I’m grateful that right now, I get to look you in the eye and tell you that you have nothing.”

She gestured around the ruined lab. “What have you built, Kieran? What have you ever built that didn’t involve stealing, lying, or hurting someone?”

He was trembling now, with a rage so complete it seemed to vibrate the air around him. The vial shook in

1/2

239

Chapter 204 If I Can’t Have It All

his hand. “I built a fucking empire!”

Finished

“You inherited a company and bled it dry!” Elera fired back. “Your ‘empire‘ is a house of cards falling down around you. The SEC is investigating you. The FBI has a file. Your own sister is a witness against you. You have nothing left. No money, no reputation, no family. You’re just a sad, old man holding a vial he doesn’t understand, trying to hurt the last person in the world who ever cared if you lived or died.”

The truth of it hung in the air, more destructive than any EMP.

Kieran’s eyes darted from Elera’s fierce, tearless face to Drakonius’s steady aim, to Xan’s hateful glare. He saw no fear. No bargaining. Just resolve. His grand monologue, his moment of ultimate power, had been stolen. Turned into his own indictment.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify