Chapter 236
KESTER.
It felt like death was licking at my heels.
The sky outside had been brooding all day–clouds thick and grey. Fiting perfectly with my mood. Almost like the universe knew it, too, that this wasn’t a celebration. This was like me attending my own funeral.
My room was quiet and tense. The kind of silence you feel in your gut.
Norlan was seated at the edge of the couch, his palms pressed together and his eyes distant. He looked like he’d just walked out of a car crash. And truth? I didn’t look or feel any better.
I stood in front of the mirror, fixing my tie with fingers that wouldn’t fucking stop shaking. Each tug felt like it was tightening a noose around my own neck.
Fuck.
I’d never been this nervous in my life. Not even when I was wrongly diagnosed and taken to the psychiatric ward years ago. Not when I gave my first speech in front of the board. Not even when I kissed Kasmine for the first time.
This was different.
This wasn’t nerves. This was my body revolting. My heart knew this wasn’t right. Every cell in my blood was screaming her name.
Kasmine.
The anger and sadness radiating off of me could burn down an entire city. But of course, this was also a step closer to being with
the woman I love.
I gritted my teeth and forced my fingers to move. “You aren’t the one getting engaged to the wrong woman, Norlan. Quit being sadder than me,” I muttered.
Norlan was barely keeping himself together. He looked like a man who had lost his purpose in life. And I knew why.
He wishes to be the one in my place at this moment. Dude is head over heels for my ‘fiancé.‘
“What are you talking about, dickhead? Come on. We have just about an hour before the event starts,” He stood up, straightened his jacket, and forced a grin that didn’t touch his eyes. “You look perfect tonight.”
I stared at him through the mirror. Neither of us looked perfect. We just looked like two men pretending they weren’t breaking inside.
I turned slowly. My fingers dropped from the tie, hanging limp by my sides.
“Did you get it?” I asked quietly.
Norlan didn’t answer immediately. He glanced toward the door like he was making sure we were still alone. Then he reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a sleek, matte–black flash drive.
He held it up between two fingers. “Encrypted, Triple–layered. You’d need a god to crack it… or me.”
walked up to him, took it without a word, but didn’t look at it yet. I stared at him instead… The man who used to hack into our school’s database just to change his grades and prank professors. I used to think it was all fun back then. But I never knew he’d take
1/2
Chapter 236
it so seriously that he’d take it to be a career.
“You sure it’s solid?” I asked in a low voice.
Norlan nodded slowly. “M’s everything. Offshore accounts. Tax evasion. Proxy companies tied to human smuggling rings in the Balkans. He thought he could scrub it clean. But that dumb fuck hired some of my old crew two years ago. I know their coding like the back of my hand.”
A grin pulled at the corner of his lips. It was cold. Nothing like the forced smile he’d worn a few minutes ago. He was in his full work mode now.
“He didn’t even encrypt his backups properly. I found a dead server in Romania that still had partial logs of every financial transaction since 2020. And get this,” he leaned closer, “one of the shell companies is laundering money through a fertility charity in Lisbon.”
I felt my chest tighten.
That was Jaden. Perfectly polished on the outside. Rotting, bleeding filth underneath.
I finally looked at the flash drive. Tiny. Harmless–looking. And yet, it could burn his entire empire to the ground.
“Who else knows?” I asked.
“No one. Not even the crew. I pulled it myself. Scrambled the IP routes and bounced them across five countries. Burned the trail after every access.”
“Good.”
Because if Jaden even smelled what we were doing, he’d come for Norlan first.
He must’ve sensed what I was thinking because he laughed softly and shook his head. “You don’t have to look at me like that, man. I know the risk. I’ve danced with devils worse than Jaden. And lived.”
He walked to the table, poured himself a shot of whiskey, and downed it in one go.
Chapter Comments
1
