This Time, I'll Be the Villain's Favorite Daughter novel Chapter 310

Chapter 310 In Another Place

“He only got this far because he was yotting enough to charm the teacher back then, and lucky enough to make it stick.” Lucy muttered, her voice low and thoroughly disgrunde? Now he walks around acting like he owns everyone.”

Maya said nothing. She neither agreed nor disagreed.

She was sitting with a theory, and it was a bold one.

It had a few turns to it, and without anything concrete to bark it up, there wasn’t much point in saying it out loud yet.

What Maya needed right now was to make a phone call.

The Imperial Order’s people had taken her phone when she arrived, so she borrowed Lucy’, and slipped away to the empty break room where no one would overhear her. She called her older brother

“It’s me,” she said, clearing her throat as the line connected.

Edric picked up, and what followed was a question delivered in the tone of someone who had already made up his mind about the answer.

“Maya,” he said, his voice gentle in a way that somehow made the back of her neck prickle, “why are you skipping school again?”

“I’m on a mission,” she said.

“How long will this mission take?” Edric wasn’t the kind of person who got distracted by the phrase “I’m on a mission.”

“That’s kind of hard to say,” Maya replied, keeping her voice vague.

At home, Raymond let her do whatever she wanted, and Wendy checked in occasionally.

Edric was the only one who made a genuine, sustained effort to include “little sister” as a category within his personal jurisdiction.

It was extremely inconvenient.

He and Toby were by far the strictest ones in the whole family.

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“Actually, while I have you,” she said, pivoting smoothly, “do you know anything about the Imperial Order?”

“It’s an intelligence organization,” Edric said, unhurried and easy. “No one knows who’s running that sho but it’s been making enemies for a long time.”

“Wait, you actually know about the Imperial Order?” Maya said.

The realization hit her a moment later. She’d been fumbling around trying to piece things together on own when she could’ve just asked her brother.

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certainly knew more about these networks.

ian and managed

She was still working out how to keep him talking when his voice cant

“You’re at the Imperial Order’s base

It wasn’t a question.

Maya’s fingers tightened around the phone. “Who told you that?

Who gave me up?

Edric’s voice carried a soft exhale, something between a sigh and the beginning of a laugh. “Maya, you never call without a reason. When you reach out to me, it’s either Decause you need me to show up for a parent conference, or because you’ve gotten yourself into something and you need me to come fix it.

He found this genuinely troubling.

His little sister had grown up.

The first thing she did after growing up was block him on every messaging platform.

She used to call him by name every five minutes, warm and sweet about it, and he later discovered she’d restricted him from seeing anything on her social media.

Once Edric found out that every single one of his brothers had been blocked too, he felt considerably better about it and made his peace with the situation.

He’d even done some reading on the subject.

Most of what he found said the same thing: don’t try to control a kid going through a rebellious phase. Give them room. Too much pressure backfires.

“You’re coming home tomorrow,” Edric said. “If you can’t get out on your own, I can negotiate directly with their leadership and bring you back myself.”

“Why would I do that?” Maya said. “I want to stay a few more days.”

“The Imperial Order is an intelligence outfit,” Edric told her, his pace unhurried and deliberate. “And a

done at that. The moment their location gets exposed, they become an open target. People

to dismantle this organization since the day it was founded. Being there puts you in real

er occupied a particular and peculiar position in the world’s shadow networks.

almost incomprehensible volume of information spanning the darkest corners of every caching from classified government operations all the way down to the internal scandals of e street gangs. If someone had the money, the Imperial Order had the intelligence.

found the organization deeply irritating on a personal level, and the nature of his job aggravated b

yance.

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Chapter

stic corks, experimental data, sensitive medis al research, all of it sit somewhere Order’s databases, wailing like a live wire for someone to touch it

the layer

When word reached him that other factions were preparing to move against the organization and take apart, he’d decided he wouldn’t mind adding his weight to that effort.

But what mattered more right now was why Maya was there all

The gentle quality in Edric’s voice cooled by a degree. “The Imperial Order has more than one faction watching it. Multiple groups have been working to pinpoint the location, and exposure is only a matter of time.

“The organization kept a low profile seven or eight years ago, he continued. “Lately it’s been drawing attention to itself at an alarming rate.

“Whoever’s running it seems determined to expand in every direction at once, like they’re trying to make themselves a target on purpose. Their safehouses have already been compromised by operatives planted from outside.”

The intelligence Edric had was clear and specific.

Multiple factions were coordinating a joint operation to systematically eliminate every krown Imperial Order location, working in waves.

And several of them were already positioned to strike the main headquarters first, within the next few days.

The thought landed with a cold, quiet weight. “You’re not actually at the main headquarters, are you?” Edric asked, something uneasy threading through his voice. “Maya?”

“You got it in one!” Maya said brightly.

Edric pressed a hand flat against his chest and held it there for a moment. “Come home. That place isn’t safe.”

A brief pause followed, and when he spoke again, his expression on the other end of the line was unreadable and entirely level. “Or would you prefer that I come there myself and bring you back personally?”

“Hold on,” Maya said sharply. “I am absolutely not getting dragged back home.”

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