Chapter 126 Chapter 126
Stanleys Pov
Nolan sat in front of the laptop, his glasses sliding down his nose as his fingers moved fast. The screen glowed against his face, pale and cold, while the rest of the room felt too dark. I could hear the keys clicking, the low hum of his mutters, and it drove me crazy but I could not sit. I kept pacing the room, the floor creaking under my boots. Every step I took felt heavier, like I was carrying bricks on my shoulders.
“Stop walking, you are making me dizzy,” Nolan said without looking up.
“I cannot stop,” I snapped. My voice sounded harsher than I meant. “We are sitting here while everything is falling apart, and all you do is type. We are wasting time.”
“This typing is the only thing keeping me sane” he shot back. He did not raise his voice, but I caught the edge under it. “Serena’s encryption was not made for people to easily break. She built it to resist people like me. Every time I press too hard, it pushes back. It is like glass with sharp edges. You press, you bleed. And it is timed so please, I beg you. Allow me focus..”
I stopped moving. My hands fell at my sides. “Timed? What do you mean timed?”
Nolan finally pulled his eyes from the screen. His face looked worn, shadows under his eyes. “If I fail too many times or if the clock inside the system reaches its final tick, it will lock for good. No more retries. No second chances. Everything Serena stored will be gone. It will be as if it never existed.”
My chest tightened and my throat burned. “So what you are saying,” I said slowly, “is we are gambling with the last thing we have?”
Nolan opened his mouth, then closed it again. That silence told me more than words could. He was not sure he could win this battle. He was just buying us time.
The room felt smaller. The hum of the laptop filled the air, and I could almost hear the ticking clock inside the system Nolan was talking about. Each second sounded like it was sliding away from us.
Before I could speak again, Liana’s phone buzzed on the table. The sound cut through the air like a blade. She grabbed it quick, her hands trembling just a little. Her eyes scanned the screen.
“It is Mason,” she said.
I moved closer, my heart jumping into my throat so hard I thought I would choke. “What did he send?”
She turned the screen toward me. It was a blurry photo. The lighting was poor, like it had been taken in secret. It looked like a piece of paper, maybe part of Dominic’s notes. I leaned closer, squinting, and caught the top line. Times, locations and short words that meant something, even if we could not see the whole.
“He is inside Dominic’s place,” Liana whispered, words laced with understanding.
But before she could scroll further, the message froze. The messages stopped coming and the information we had was incomplete. Then the screen went black.
“What happened?” I barked, my voice echoing off the walls.
She tapped the phone again and again, her fingers pressing hard. No new messages came.
“Did Dominic catch him?” I asked. The thought made my blood boil.
Nolan leaned back in his chair, pushing his glasses up with one finger. His face stayed too calm. “It could be nothing. Maybe weak signal or bad connection.”
“Or it could be everything,” I growled. My fists curled so tight my knuckles cracked.
Every part of me burned. I wanted to grab a gun and storm into Dominic’s world right then. I wanted to tear his walls down stone by stone, find Mason, drag him out, and put a bullet through Dominic’s head with my bare hands still shaking. Every muscle in me screamed for it. I could almost see Dominic’s smirk in my mind, the kind that said he thought he was untouchable.
But Liana moved fast. She stepped in front of me, her hand pressing firm on my chest. Her eyes held mine.
“Calm down,” she said, her voice low but steady. “If you do anything now, you will blow everything. Mason risked his life to get that to us. Do not throw it away.”
“Liana is right,” Nolan added, his tone flat, almost tired. “We need patience. We need proof. Mason knew what he was doing.”
Patience. That word tasted bitter. It always had. I had never been good at waiting, not in fights, not in life. And now they asked me to wait while Mason’s life might be hanging by a thread?
I turned my face away from them, jaw locked so hard it ached. The air in the room grew too heavy, pressing against my chest. My breaths came rough, every inhale filled with fire, every exhale like smoke. The walls seemed to close in. Serena’s voice whispered in the corners of my mind. Mason’s silence rang in my ears. Dominic’s shadow stood taller than ever.
I whispered to myself, so low it was almost a growl. “If Mason is dead because of this, I swear Dominic will not live to see the next sunrise.”