The Heiress He Underestimated novel Chapter 21

The next week passed in a strange double life, a tightrope walk between two worlds that were about to collide. In the daylight, she was Elyrian Nethys, the blissfully engaged billionaire darling. She lunched with. Xan’s mother, a woman with frosted hair and eyes like chips of ice, who patted her hand and spoke of flower arrangements and of good bloodlines. She endured dress fittings for the Valdris gala, standing for hours in silk and tulle while her father beamed in the corner, already counting his future wealth.

At night, she was Dr. Mystral, the architect of a desperate plan. She worked until her eyes burned, refining the Chimera Protocol on her lab computers. The data from Drakonius’s new tests was both inspiring and terrifying. She saw the enemy clearly now, a mutating shadow in his cells. Her proposed treatment was a wild, beautiful gamble–a combination of targeted viral vectors and synthesized proteins designed to outsmart his own DNA.

It was brilliant but it was also terrifying. The margin for error was zero.

And in the quiet, stolen moments between these two roles, she was simply Elera, texting with a man who was slowly becoming more than a business partner.

It started with logistics. Drakonius would text about the legal papers for their marriage, dry and factual. She would reply with a question about his symptoms. Did the new amino acid supplement cause nausea? He would answer, then sometimes add a quiet observation. The sunset from the medical wing is particularly stark tonight. It reminds me of a painting I saw in Oslo.

The texts were never long. Never overly personal. But they were a constant, quiet thread connecting her to someone who knew the truth. In a world of lies, his blunt honesty was a refuge.

One evening, after a particularly grueling session of smiling vapidly at Xan’s friends, she was back in her secret study. A new alert flashed on her screen–another, more aggressive probe into Nethys Medical’s ‘firewalls. This one was different. It had a signature, a digital fingerprint that was arrogantly bold. It traced back to a shell corporation she recognized: Lyre Holdings.

Lyra.

Drakonius’s sister was not being subtle anymore.

Before she could dive deeper, her personal phone buzzed. Xan.

Missing you, my beautiful fiancée. Counting the days until the gala. Until the world knows you’re mine.

The words made her skin crawl. She stared at them, the slick possessive tone a stark contrast to the quiet, respectful texts from Drakonius. She felt a sudden, overwhelining need for a different kind of conversation.

Without overthinking it, she opened her texts to Drakonius. She didn’t mention the cyber attack. She didn’t talk about Xan. She typed the first thing that came into her tired mind,

Elera: What was the painting in Oslo?

The reply came a few minutes later, just as she was running a decryption algorithm on the Lyre Holdings probe.

Drakonius: Munch. Not “The Scream. A smaller one. “The Sick Child.

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