Chapter 848:

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The violence in Dallas’s posture shattered, replaced by something far more terrifying: a stillness so profound it seemed to suck the air from the room. His face went blank and his eyes turned into black, bottomless pits. He looked at her stomach, then back at her face, and the raw, unholy rage that filled his gaze was enough to scorch the earth. It was the rage of a predator whose nest had been threatened.

“I am going to kill him,” Dallas whispered. The words were not a threat. They were a vow, a sacred, blood-soaked promise made to the universe. “I will flay him alive and salt his wounds. I will dismantle his life, his name, his memory, until the world forgets he ever drew breath.”

“I know,” Eliza said softly. “But not yet. Not with rage.”

She closed the distance between them and placed her hands flat against his chest, feeling the frantic, hammering beat of his heart beneath her palms.

“He wants you to be a beast, Dallas. He wants you to charge, blind with anger, into a trap of his own making. The Pentagon, the board, his political allies: they will use your violence to cage you. We have to be smarter. Colder.”

She looked up at him, her eyes burning with a fierce, cold light of their own.

“I activated a protocol. From my father. An old network, outside of government, outside of anyone’s control. They are ghosts. They will hunt him in the shadows while you fight him in the light.”

𝖩𝘰𝗂ո 𝗼𝘂𝘳 c𝗼𝗆𝘮𝘶𝘯і𝘁у оո g𝘢l𝗇𝗼v𝖾l𝘀.co𝘮

Dallas’s hands came up to grip her shoulders, his touch surprisingly gentle, almost reverent. He searched her face, seeing the truth of her words and the steel she had forged in the face of his worst enemy.

“The financial markets,” he said, his voice regaining its command as the rage was channeled into lethal focus. “He declared war. The attack will come at the opening bell. That is the first battlefield.”

“Then we will meet him there,” Eliza said. “And we will make him bleed.”

A sharp rap on the door broke the moment. Shields entered, his face grim.

“Sir, ma’am. We have a problem. Anson Hyde is at the main gate. He’s demanding to see you. He says it’s about Cathey.”

Dallas and Eliza exchanged a look. The game was moving faster than they had anticipated. The pawns were being pushed into play.

“Let him in,” Dallas said, his voice like ice. “Bring him here. It’s time to find out whose side he’s really on.”

Anson Hyde was led into the study like a prisoner to his own execution. His expensive tuxedo was rumpled, his hair damp with melting snow. He clutched a sleek, black hard drive in one hand, his knuckles white. The arrogance he usually wore like a second skin was gone, replaced by a desperate, feverish intensity.

He stopped in the center of the room, his eyes darting from Dallas’s cold, predatory stillness to Eliza’s watchful calm.

“She’s gone,” Anson said, his voice cracking. “Cathey. She met with someone tonight. Her mother’s people. They gave her this.” He held up the hard drive. “It’s a blackmail file. Everything. Gideon’s manipulation of Dosha, his infiltration of Hyde Industries, his plans to use our family to attack yours.”

He took a ragged breath, his gaze fixed on Dallas.

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