Chapter 849:

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“I confronted her. I thought… I thought she was betraying me. Betraying us. I said things. I ended it.” His face twisted in self-loathing. “And then she was gone. I went back to the penthouse and she wasn’t there. Her phone, her purse, everything… left behind. Gideon has her, Dallas. I know it. He took her to punish me for hesitating. To force my hand.”

Eliza watched him, her mind a cold, calculating machine. The story was plausible, and the desperation felt real. But every part of it was a perfectly constructed lie, designed by Gideon to paint Anson as a tragic, repentant victim. It was a play to gain access and to sow chaos from within.

Dallas didn’t move.

“You came here,” he said, his voice a low, dangerous rumble. “To my house. After threatening my family, after aligning yourself with my enemy. And you expect me to believe this… performance?”

𝖥𝗶n𝘥 𝘯𝗈𝘃е𝗹 PD𝖥𝗌 𝗈𝗇 𝘨a𝗅nо𝘷𝖾𝗅s.co𝘮

“It’s not a performance!” Anson’s voice rose, bordering on hysterical. “He’s been playing me from the start! Using my hatred for you, twisting it. He promised me revenge, but he just wanted a puppet. This proves it!”

He slammed the hard drive down on the antique desk between them.

“The encryption is military-grade. But the data is there. It’s the truth. I swear it.”

He looked at Eliza, his eyes pleading. “I love her. For all my ambition, for all my anger… I love her. I was a fool. Please. Help me get her back.”

Eliza stepped forward and picked up the hard drive. It was cold and smooth in her hand. A perfect Trojan horse.

“Gideon is a master of games, Anson,” she said, her voice soft, almost sympathetic. “He preys on weakness. On desire. He tells you what you want to hear.”

She met his eyes.

“You say you love Cathey. But what you wanted was the Koch name. The power. Anson, did you ever truly see her? Or was she just a prize to be won?”

The question hit him like a physical blow. A flicker of genuine pain crossed his face, so real it was almost convincing. It was the pain of a narcissist forced to confront his own reflection.

Before he could answer, Dallas’s private phone buzzed on the desk with a single, urgent tone. He glanced at the screen, and his expression hardened.

“It’s from the Hyde penthouse,” Dallas said, his eyes locking on Anson. “My perimeter team. They have thermal confirmation. Cathey is inside. She never left.”

The air in the room turned to solid ice.

Anson’s face drained of color, leaving behind a sickly, gray pallor. His carefully constructed reality shattered in an instant. He stared at Dallas, his mouth opening and closing, but no sound came out.

He had been so certain. Gideon’s lie had been so perfect, so tailored to his fears and his ego, that he had never once questioned it. He had run here, played his part, and delivered the prop, all while the woman he claimed to love was a prisoner in his own home. He wasn’t a player. He wasn’t even a puppet. He was a fool. A blind, pathetic joke.

“Get him out of my sight,” Dallas said to Shields, his voice dripping with contempt. “Put him in a holding room. Strip him. Search him. I’ll deal with him after the sun comes up.”

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