?Chapter 1427:


    Kolton’s analysis of the dungeon was methodical, chilling in its rity. The evidence spoke of a meticulously nned operation. The rescue team had moved with the confident knowledge of insiders — they knew theyout intimately, and their first acts had been to blind the estate’s electronic eyes and sever its rms.


    What was truly damning, however, was the coordination. The fire at the prison gates had erupted with stopwatch precision. Such precision was not the work of outsiders feeling their way in the dark. It was the signature of a conspiracy. Without internal betrayal, a rescue of this speed and scale would have been impossible.


    Someone loyal to udius. Perhaps more than one.


    Kolton’s jaw tightened. Traitors. He would find them, make them pay, and let the rest of the estate witness the cost of disloyalty.


    He finished his coffee and set the mug down firmly. Everyone flinched at the sharp clink — the sound of impending danger. Among the kneeling servants, one man clenched his teeth, guilt twisting in his stomach. Innocent people were dying for a secret he alone carried. He drew a slow breath and steeled himself. If he had to die, he would at least die clean.


    Then a sharp ringtone cut through the silence.


    Kolton’s brow knitted in displeasure as he drew out his phone. The call was from the operative trailing Kiley.


    “Report,” he said, swiping to answer.


    “Mr. Cooper… there’s a problem.” The voice quivered with a tension that was wholly unlike the cold-blooded operative he knew. That unusual tremor betrayed something deeper than nerves.


    Kolton’s expression hardened. It was the first time one of his operatives had shown any hint of emotion.


    “Speak,” he demanded.


    A brief silence followed on the other end, as if the man were gathering himself — or confirming what he was about to say.


    “Critical security breach.” The words came out heavy, deliberate. “You shoulde to the Cooper Group headquarters immediately. I apologize, sir, but the situation is severe, and I must report everything directly to the boss.”


    A series of beeps followed. The call ended.


    Read from your phone on


    Kolton’s grip on the phone snapped tight, his knuckles draining to white. A thin sheen of cold sweat formed on his brow. His chest tightened as though an invisible hand were squeezing his heart without mercy.


    He had only tasked the operative with keeping an eye on Kiley. How had it escted into a critical security breach? As head of Cooper Group, Kolton knew exactly what that phrase meant — the highest alert level. Every ndestine operation, every buried secret, every shred of evidence that could destroy him, exposed. And the operative had mentioned the boss, meaning Thomas. The true puppeteer behind everything.


    Fear overtook his anger, sharp and immediate.


    “Prepare the car!” He rose, the chair scraping the floor like a warning. “Cooper Group headquarters. Now!”


    After a few steps, he stopped.


    His gaze swept over the shivering household staff and guards kneeling on the marble floor. Disgust and cold fury burned in his eyes. A critical security breach meant only one thing — a purge had begun. Better to eliminate a hundred innocents than let a single traitor slip through.


    “Take care of them. All of them. Make it clean.” His voice was t and detached, as though issuing a routine order.


    The mole among the kneeling group froze, eyes going wide. He lurched to his feet, his voice cracking. “It was me! I’m the mole! It has nothing to do with them — take me instead!”


    Kolton didn’t pause. He didn’t even nce back. He stepped out into the rain, his silhouette rigid and merciless. He had no interest in tormenting udius’s people, no time to weigh innocence against guilt. In the face of the family’s survival — and this unforgivable security failure — a handful of disposable lives meant nothing.


    Bang. Bang. Bang.


    The operatives opened fire without hesitation. The living room erupted in a storm of gunfire, muzzle shes leaping like the Reaper’s cruelughter. Bullets tore through the kneeling crowd with the relentlessness of a hurricane. Screams, sobs, and desperate cries for mercy ricocheted through the grand room. Blood sprayed across the once-pristine white roses, turning them into a grotesque tapestry of red.


    At Cooper Group’s private hospital, the emergency room hummed with the steady beeping of machines.


    On the bed, udius — long held in aa — slowly fluttered his eyshes. Then he opened his eyes.


    The first thing he saw was the ceiling, blindingly white under the harsh overhead lights. Difort stabbed at him. Consciousness returned in shards. Memories surfaced in fragments: the dungeon, the fire, the escape, the surgery.


    He had survived.


    udius shifted his gaze, taking in the flurry of doctors and nurses moving around him. He wanted to ask questions, to signal, to move. He willed his right hand to rise.


    Nothing happened.


    It was as if his arm had turned to stone — or ceased to exist entirely. He willed his toes to move.


    Still nothing.


    A chilling detachment swept over him. This was his body, yet not his. A foreign shell. A cage. Panic wed at him, sharp and suffocating — his mind fully alive, trapped inside a lifeless vessel.


    He refused to ept it. He forced his eyes to move, the only part he could stillmand, though even that was minimal. He tried to speak, to roar, to produce any sound at all, but his throat betrayed him. His vocal cords, like broken strings, refused to obey. Only a faint puff of air escaped — audible to himself alone.


    Despair crashed over him like a relentless tide.


    He had once been the sharpest de of Cooper Group — the brilliant strategist, the heir who could outthink anyone. Now he was a prisoner in his own flesh.


    Damn it.


    He cursed silently, rage smoldering behind his still expression, as a single cold tear slid from the corner of his eye.


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