The Billionaire’s Bride Pushed His Mother Off the Rooftop—Then the Maid Did the Unthinkable

Nathaniel was shaken, but Rose’s unflinching resolve snapped the icy paralysis that had seized his limbs. He stepped between Eleanor and the blast-shield doors, raising his tactical rifle toward the corridor where the boots of Eleanor’s private strike team were already thundering up the concrete stairwell.

"Two minutes!" Nathaniel called out, slamming the reinforced lock mechanism. "We're sealed in, but the external servos won't hold against thermal breaching charges for more than ninety seconds!"

"That’s sixty seconds more than I need," Rose answered.

She lunged across the mahogany desk, grabbing Eleanor by the lapels of her bespoke silk jacket and slamming her down onto the glass surface. The matriarch gasped, her claw-like nails raking at Rose’s forearms, but Rose was faster. With practiced, ruthless precision, Rose pinned Eleanor’s left wrist to the desk with the butt of her pistol.

"You can't disarm it!" Eleanor hissed through clenched teeth, her face twisted in venomous fury. "It’s encrypted to my vagus nerve! If the current drops below five millivolts, the radio mast transmits the launch sequence to the payloads under the harbor! You’ll kill tens of thousands!"

"Then I won't drop the current," Rose muttered. She reached into her utility belt, retrieving a miniature bypass wire and an emergency defibrillator ampoule—tools she had lifted from the compound's subterranean medical bay.

The digital counter overhead flashed: *01:14... 01:13...*

Rose slammed the conductive needle of the bypass kit directly through the skin above the cuff, grounding the electrical potential into a portable lithium battery pack. "Nathaniel! I need an alternating frequency!"

Nathaniel didn't hesitate. Firing a three-round burst through the reinforced vision slit of the heavy door to drive back the approaching mercenaries, he dashed to the control terminal behind Eleanor’s desk. His fingers flew across the keyboard, hacking through the security bypass protocols that his father had built into the original Vance infrastructure decades ago.

"Bypass routed!" Nathaniel shouted. "Sever it now!"

Rose sliced the surgical titanium band using a high-density diamond cutter. Sparks showered across the desk, singing the antique wood and searing the flesh of Eleanor’s forearm. Eleanor screamed—a raw, guttural shriek of agony and thwarted ambition.

*00:08... 00:07... 00:06...*

The cuff slid free from Eleanor’s flesh. The blue light flashed red once, twice—and then settled into a dull, dormant emerald green as the battery pack fooled the neural receiver into registering a steady, artificial pulse.

The timer froze at *00:03*.