Chapter 160: Figuring Out Everything
No One’s POV
Amelia was sleeping peacefully in her bed, her mind finally escaping the absolute nightmare of the morning. But the peace didn’t last long. The bedroom door was violently kicked open, slamming against the wall with a crash as her dad barged in.
Woken up by the suddennoise, Amelia sat up, rubbing her eyes and looking at her father with pure annoyance.
"Daddy, why are you making so much noise?" she groaned, pulling the blanket up to her chest. "I have a massive headache."
"Noise?! I am about to make your whole life an absolute hell!" Mr. Laurent roared, his face purple with rage. "Wake up right now and look at what you did!!"
Hearing the explosive anger in his voice for the very first time in her life, the drowsiness vanished instantly. Amelia hurriedly scrambled out of bed. Her hands shook as she grabbed her phone off the nightstand, her screen already blowing up with hundreds of notifications. She tapped open the first link.
Her eyes widened. Her breath completely hitched.
"This... this..." she stuttered, her voice cracking as all the blood drained from her face.
On the screen was a collection of high-quality, scandalous pictures and short video clips. It showed her in a completely drowsy, drugged state, crying and desperately throwing herself at a man inside a car, aggressively crashing her lips into his. While Enzo’s face was cleverly kept in the shadows, her own face was under the bright streetlights- 100% visible and unmistakable.
Her original plan last night was to humiliate Vivien in front of high society. But now, the tables had turned in the most horrific way possible. It was her getting completely humiliated and dragged all over the internet, with the articles calling her the "desperate heiress."
"WHO TOOK THESE?!!!" she screamed at the top of her lungs, throwing her phone onto the bed in pure denial.
"That means it really is you!" her father’s booming voice cut through her screams. He marched right up to her, his chest heaving. "Do you even realize what you have done?! You begged me to pull strings so you could be with Dominic Valente! In fact, being with him would have made our company untouchable! But no- you decided to go out and ruin absolutely everything in a single night!" he kept shouting, his hands gesturing wildly.
Amelia’s shock rapidly hardened into a venomous rage. Her eyes burned with pure fury as she tightly clenched her nails into her palms. She knew Enzo wouldn’t leak this- he hated the media attention just as much.
Dominic wouldn’t do it like this either. There was only one person who stood to gain from her downfall.
"It’s all because of that broke, nasty girl!" Amelia shrieked, her voice distorting with hatred as she thought of Vivien. "She did this to me! I will kill her!! I swear I will literally kill her!!!"
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Vivien felt a violent shiver run straight down her spine. The air in her apartment suddenly felt heavy, suffocating, and far too thin. It was that prickling sensation that someone’s eyes were locked onto her, tracing her every move.
She followed the gut feeling, her eyes darting across the room. At first glance, she saw nothing out of the ordinary- just her usual furniture. Yet, she decided to trust her instincts completely this time. She stepped up onto a chair and carefully checked the high corner shelf near her smoke detector.
What she found made her eyes widen in absolute horror.
Tucked deep of a decorative piece was a high-tech mini camera. It was smaller than a coin, its tiny lens blinking with a faint light. Her stomach dropped. She reached out, ripped the device out of its hiding spot, and stared at the cold piece of metal for a long moment.
Pure fury washed over her. With a snap, she crushed the casing using a heavy paperweight from her desk and carefully pried out the tiny micro-chip inside.
Holding the chip in her trembling hand, she hurriedly opened her laptop. She grabbed an external card reader, slammed the chip into it, and loaded up her tracking and network detection software. She began tracing the data stream and the registered device ID linked to the live feed.
The screen flickered, showing a loading bar.
Processing data packet...
20%... 30%... 50%...
"Don’t tell me it’s him... please, anyone but him..." she prayed frantically in her mind, her hands clutched tightly against her chest. If he had been watching her through a camera this entire time, then every single secret, every breakdown, and every private moment was completely compromised.
90%...
100% Complete.
The screen flashed a bright blue Light. The host server location, encrypted network signature, and the master device ID populated the screen in neat rows of data. It was an exact match to the private server network of Dominic Valente.
Vivien’s eyes widened, the breath completely trapped in her throat.
It was him. He hadn’t just stolen her things or taken her book. He had been sitting in his dark office, completely silent, watching her live inside her own home like a caged animal.
Every single bit of fear she had left instantly vanished, replaced by a cold realization of just how deep his obsession truly ran.
Vivien stood up from her chair, pacing back and forth across the small room as absolute panic began to paralyze her.
Her hands were shaking so hard she could barely think straight.
"Since I know his secrets... he won’t just come and drag me away, right? Right?!" she whispered frantically to the empty room.
She tried to rationalize it. She tried to tell herself that this wasn’t some fictional book anymore where an alpha male lead could just do whatever he pleased without consequences. This was the real world! There were laws! There was a system!
But the truth crashed down on her a second later: Dominic Valente was the system. He was wealthy and powerful enough to make a girl like her completely disappear without leaving a single trace.
She frantically tried to map an escape route in her mind, but every single path led to a brick wall.
She couldn’t just pack up her bags and move to a different neighborhood. She didn’t have the savings for a new security deposit, and breaking her lease early meant paying a massive financial penalty. And the absolute worst part? her entire apartment complex was a subsidiary of Valente Corp. He literally owned the roof over her head!
She couldn’t just transfer to another college. She was in the middle of a rigorous program, and moving her credits would take months of bureaucratic paperwork. To make matters worse, Dominic was the principal!!
Even if she gathered the courage to run away into different city, Dominic could sue her!!
He could sue her for breach of her employment contract, accuse her of stealing corporate data from his study, or slap her with a devastating legal penalty that would ruin her entire future before it even started.
He had completely trapped her. Every single aspect of her life- her home, her education, her finances- was neatly tucked inside his palm. He had engineered a perfect cage, and she had been happily singing inside it for months without a clue.
Vivien grabbed her head, wanting to literally pull her hair out in maddening frustration. Her chest heaved as tears of anger pricked her eyes.
"What should I do?!" she screamed inside her mind, staring at the crushed microchip on her desk. "How am I supposed to fight a maniac who owns everything?!"
Ding-dong.
The sudden chime of her doorbell echoed through the quiet apartment. Vivien’s head snapped toward the door, her eyes widening.
Her breath hitched. Who on earth could it be right now? Was it Dominic? Had he already tracked her down? Or was it Amelia coming to finish her off? She frozen in place, staring at the locked wooden door.
Meanwhile, across the city, Dominic’s car passed through the gates of his private estate, came to stop right in front of the grand entrance.
The moment Dominic stepped out of the car, the air around the porch turned completely frigid. The elite guards who had been knocked out earlier were now standing in a straight line, their heads bowed low with shame. They were trembling, absolutely terrified of the man standing before them.
"Explain," Dominic uttered.
"B-Boss..." the head guard stammered, sweat pouring down his pale face. "We- we don’t know what happened. The security feeds briefly glitched, and before we could investigate, a highly paralytic gas was deployed through the vents near our posts. We were out cold within seconds. We tried to- "
"Pack your things," Dominic cut him off, his voice flat, devoid of any humanity. "You are all fired. If I ever see any of your faces in this city again, you won’t live long enough to regret it. Get out of my sight."
The guards didn’t dare to argue. They bowed frantically and scattered like mice, grateful to have escaped with their lives.
Dominic didn’t give them a second glance as he stormed into the mansion and headed straight up the stairs to his private study. He scanned the room. His desk, his laptop, his hidden safes- every single corporate and personal file was completely intact.
Next, he walked down the hall and pushed open the doors to his master bedroom.
Indeed, Vivien was gone. The silk comforter was thrown back, left exactly how she had crawled out of it. The room was perfectly arranged, just as he had designed it. Dominic walked over to his vanity, his frosty eyes softening for a brief fraction of a second as he looked down at her small personal belongings.
He had deliberately left those items out in the open for her to find. After all, she had been far too ignorant to notice they were even missing from her own apartment, and he was rapidly growing impatient with her lack of awareness.
He had wanted her to realize who he was.
"Boss," his chief assistant whispered, cautiously stepping into the bedroom while holding a tablet. "Our tech team has swept the entire estate. Absolutely nothing was stolen from the premises. No data, no valuables, no weapons. But... why would a highly skilled intruder break in just to leave empty-handed?"
"Because whoever it was... wasn’t here to steal from me," Dominic said, his voice dropping into a chilling tone. He turned around, his eyes turning completely dead and cold as he stared at the tablet screen in his assistant’s hand.
The screen displayed the last saved footage from the hidden camera inside Vivien’s apartment. It showed the exact moment Vivien had ripped the mini lens from her wall, her eyes burning right before she smashed the casing and the entire feed went black.
"They were here to help my Vivien run away from my grasp," Dominic whispered, his knuckles turning white as he clenched his fists.
A predatory smirk slowly pulled at the corners of his lips, though his eyes remained frozen.
"She thinks she can hide from me now. Let her play her little game for a few hours."
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TO BE CONTINUED
