Vicious Revenge Of The Genius Ward

Daryl's hand froze in mid-air. His chest heaved with ragged breaths as the cold milk dripped from his chin onto the expensive Persian rug. He slowly lowered his arm, his hands shaking with barely contained rage.

"She is a psychopath, Hillard!" Daryl spat, wiping the milk from his face with a trembling hand. "She needs to be locked in a padded cell!"

Keira casually pulled a linen napkin from the table and wiped a drop of milk from her thumb. She looked at Daryl, a slow, mocking smirk spreading across her pale lips. She let out a short, sharp laugh.

"You're presenting the West District project," Keira said, her voice suddenly crystal clear, stripped of all the slurred exhaustion she had been faking. "And you just made three fatal errors in your summary."

Daryl stared at her, stunned for a second, before bursting into a loud, condescending laugh. "What? You think a junkie who failed high school chemistry knows anything about R&D?"

Keira ignored his laughter. She placed both hands on the table and leaned forward.

"The sequencing models for the West District project," Keira said, her words firing like bullets. "You claimed they are outperforming projections. But the internal data I accessed last week shows the opposite—the error rate is spiking, and your 'breakthrough' is nothing but manipulated numbers. Based on the degradation curves of your samples, the actual stability is less than ten percent of what you reported. Your data is doctored. If you put that into development, the project will collapse within six months."

Daryl's laughter cut off instantly. The blood rushed out of his face, leaving him a sickly, pale gray. His pupils dilated in sheer panic. She had just verbally dissected the exact technical bottleneck he had been desperately hiding from the board of directors.

Keira didn't stop. She took a step toward him, her eyes locking onto his trembling fingers.

"And speaking of junkies," Keira whispered, her voice dripping with venom. "Your dilated pupils, the micro-tremors in your hands, the excessive diaphoresis in a sixty-eight-degree room. You're not working late, Daryl. You're experiencing acute withdrawal from synthetic amphetamines."

She tilted her head, her eyes burning into his. "A garbage executive relying on pills to keep his heart beating has no right to call anyone else an addict."

The dining room plunged into a suffocating silence.

Daryl looked like he had been struck by lightning. He stumbled backward, his eyes darting frantically toward Hillard.

Hillard sat perfectly still at the head of the table. His dark eyes were fixed on Daryl. He despised liars, and he despised incompetence even more. He slowly adjusted his platinum cufflink, a gesture that signaled his absolute, cold fury.

"Hillard, she's lying!" Daryl stammered, his voice cracking. "The data just needs minor recalibration! And I'm not-I don't take-"

Keira closed the distance between them. She leaned in close to Daryl's ear and whispered, "I know exactly what chemical cocktail is keeping your heart beating. I also know you can't afford it on a standard VP salary. I tracked the bleeding accounts from the McKnight biolabs. Want me to guess out loud which encrypted offshore supplier is currently draining your personal funds?"

Daryl let out a choked gasp. He looked at Keira as if she were a demon that had just crawled out of hell. Stripped of his corporate armor and his secrets exposed, he grabbed his ruined portfolio, turned on his heel, and sprinted out of the dining room.

The heavy doors swung shut behind him.

Keira turned around. She met Hillard's deep, impenetrable gaze. She didn't look away, her chin held high, her breathing steady.

Hillard slowly raised his hands and gave two slow, deliberate claps. The sound echoed loudly in the empty room.

"A brilliant psychological execution," Hillard murmured, his voice low and rich. "But do not ever play with fire in my house again."

He stood up, walked over to her, and pulled a thick, gold-foil envelope from his inner jacket pocket. He held it out to her.

It was an admission letter to the St. Jude Elite Academy.

Keira frowned, refusing to take the envelope. "What is this? I don't need to go to some aristocratic kindergarten. I need to destroy McKnight."

"With your current reputation," Hillard said coldly, "you couldn't even get past the lobby security of the McKnight corporate tower."

He pulled a printed roster from the envelope and pointed a long finger at a name highlighted in yellow: Cassie McKnight.

Keira's eyes locked onto the name. Her breath hitched. Her heart slammed against her ribs. Cassie was Jed McKnight's prized daughter, the crown jewel of the family that had murdered her grandparents.

"Cassie is the core of their next generation," Hillard stated, his eyes watching Keira's physical reaction closely. "Getting close to her is the fastest way to cut into the belly of the beast."

Keira's mind raced. She saw the tactical advantage instantly. She reached out and snatched the envelope from his hand. As she pulled it away, her cold fingertips brushed against his warm skin. A jolt of static electricity snapped between them, heavy with unspoken danger and mutual calculation.

"Fine," Keira said, her voice hard. "I'll play the schoolgirl. But I want a fully equipped biochemical laboratory and absolute financial freedom."

Hillard let out a dark chuckle. "You will get no financial freedom. Every cent you spend will be audited by Alex."

He leaned down, his face inches from hers. "But I will build you a state-of-the-art lab in the basement of this estate. Under twenty-four-hour surveillance."

Keira's jaw tightened at the mention of surveillance, but she knew it was the best deal she could extract right now. She gave a sharp nod.

She gripped the gold envelope tightly in her hand, turned, and walked toward the stairs, her posture radiating the lethal intent of a predator finally let off its leash.