The Unshackled: A Hacker's Retribution

The Unshackled: A Hacker's Retribution

rabb

5.0
Comment(s)
15.5K
View
22
Chapters

On the night of her twenty-sixth birthday, Eliana Walker pushed her wheelchair through bar after bar, scouring every club in sight. It wasn't until she received a call from the police station that her search for Lucien Lane came to an end. "Is this Ms. Walker? Mr. Lane got drunk and started a fight. We need you to come down here." After hanging up, Eliana rubbed warmth into her stiff fingers, unsure whether to feel relief or sorrow. Before dawn, she finally reached the police station, just in time to see Lucien erupting in fury, "Who the hell told you to call her? Sure, she saved my life-but those useless crippled legs have shackled me for ten damn years! If she weren't Ethan's sister, I would've thrown a few million at her to be done with it long ago!" Shards from the shattered bottle sprayed through the air, one slashing across Eliana's face. Her face was slick with wetness-she couldn't tell if it was blood or tears. With trembling hands, Eliana dialed a number. She drew in a deep breath, her voice resolute, "Send out the message worldwide, the Anonymous hacker alliance will no longer offer any support to Lucien Lane's company. If any hackers want to test the strength of Lane Corporation's firewall, be my guest."

Chapter 1 Ten Years For Nothing

On the night of her twenty-sixth birthday, Eliana Walker pushed her wheelchair through bar after bar, scouring every club in sight.

It wasn't until she received a call from the police station that her search for Lucien Lane came to an end.

"Is this Ms. Walker? Mr. Lane got drunk and started a fight. We need you to come down here."

After hanging up, Eliana rubbed warmth into her stiff fingers, unsure whether to feel relief or sorrow.

Before dawn, she finally reached the police station, just in time to see Lucien erupting in fury, "Who the hell told you to call her? Sure, she saved my life-but those useless crippled legs have shackled me for ten damn years! If she weren't Ethan's sister, I would've thrown a few million at her to be done with it long ago!" Ethan Walker was Eliana's elder brother.

Shards from the shattered bottle sprayed through the air, one slashing across Eliana's face.

Her face was slick with wetness-she couldn't tell if it was blood or tears.

With trembling hands, Eliana dialed a number.

She drew in a deep breath, her voice resolute, "Send out the message worldwide, the Anonymous hacker alliance will no longer offer any support to Lucien Lane's company. If any hackers want to test the strength of Lane Corporation's firewall, be my guest."

After posting bail, Eliana looked calmly at Lucien.

He had clearly been drinking heavily, his cheeks flushed with an unnatural redness.

Catching Eliana's gaze, Lucien pulled a mocking smile across his face, "So, you came. Don't be mad-give me a kiss, huh?"

No matter how outrageous Lucien's behavior had been, a kiss had always been enough to appease Eliana.

But this time, Eliana moved aside without a word, "Lucien, if you despise me, just say it to my face." I never intended to cling to you."

Lucien's brows drew tight as he wrestled with the weight of his hangover.

After a long pause, he finally asked with feigned nonchalance, "What did you just say?"

Eliana looked at him, a wave of helplessness washing over her.

Just as she was about to repeat herself, a girl with tear-reddened eyes flung herself into Lucien's arms, "It's all my fault, it's all because of me... If it weren't for me, Lucien wouldn't have fought them, and he wouldn't be this badly hurt!"

Eliana recognized the girl as Vivian Carter, the new intern at Lucien's company.

Not long ago, she had still addressed him respectfully as "Mr. Lane".

He had even laughed as he called the new girl adorably clumsy.

The girl's fingers brushed carelessly across Lucien's Adam's apple.

Eliana's pupils contracted sharply.

That was the most sensitive spot on Lucien's body.

Once, out of sheer curiosity, Eliana had touched it, and Lucien had shut the door, taking a cold shower for half an hour to cool down.

Yet now, facing Vivian, Lucien's voice was hoarse as he caught her earlobe between his lips, "Can't get enough, huh?"

The girl blushed scarlet and buried her face in his chest, "Someone's here!"

Lucien seized her lips in a fierce kiss, "Who gives a damn about the others!"

He kissed her with such force that the wound on his chest split open, blooming scarlet across his shirt.

He was truly drunk-wild, reckless, almost unhinged.

Or perhaps, this was who he really was.

Eliana looked at the upturned corners of Lucien's eyes, already misted with passion from his fervor.

She remembered how, whenever she tried to take things further, those smoldering, flirtatious eyes would curve ever so slightly, "No, we can't."

She had protested, demanding why it was only her who wasn't allowed.

Lucien would ruffle her hair, "You're too young, having sex this early isn't good for you."

Back then, she had been smug, believing she was cherished, set apart as the one dearest to his heart.

But now she realized that the Lucien who had seemed so restrained and ascetic before her was perhaps only that way because he never loved her.

Just as he claimed to be a germaphobe, yet his shirt bore glaring stains of another woman's lipstick.

Because he didn't love her, even the simplest touch repulsed him so much that he cloaked it with lies.

Her palm was already torn and bloody, yet the pain in her heart was far worse.

Eliana steered her wheelchair forward, slowly coming to a stop before the two of them.

She lifted her hand high and struck them each across the face.

"This is a police station-show some damn decency, both of you."

Continue Reading

Other books by rabb

More
Too Late To Beg: The Don's Regret

Too Late To Beg: The Don's Regret

Mafia

5.0

I was still bleeding into the mesh underwear the hospital gave me when the photos hit the internet: my husband, the Don, forcing his tongue down his mistress's throat. Three days ago, that very mistress had shoved me off a yacht. I lost the baby. I lost my uterus. I was left completely barren. Yet, when my husband finally called, it wasn't to ask if I was alive. "The press is eating us alive," Dante barked through the phone. "Send a gift basket to Sofia. Fix this mess." To make matters worse, his grandmother stood at the foot of my bed, holding the hand of the daughter they had stolen from me at birth. "Mommy looks like a ghost," my daughter said, her voice devoid of love. That was the moment the last ember of affection died. I realized I wasn't a wife to them; I was just a broken vessel. So, when they sneered that I was useless, I didn't cry. I pulled a black USB drive from under my pillow and threw it on the bed. "Divorce papers," I said calmly. "And the complete security blueprints of the Moretti Fortress. Every blind spot. Every tunnel I designed." "Sign the papers and let me go, or I sell this drive to your enemies for one dollar." I left the country with nothing but the clothes on my back, vanishing into a freezing attic in Paris. I thought I was finally free. But three weeks later, Dante kicked down my door, looking at my poverty with horror. "Come home," he begged, tossing a box of diamonds onto my drafting table. "We can be a family." I looked at the man who had destroyed me and opened the window. "You're looking for the girl who loved you," I whispered, throwing the diamonds into the trash alley below. "But you killed her."

Runaway Mistress: The Mafia Boss Begs On His Knees

Runaway Mistress: The Mafia Boss Begs On His Knees

Mafia

5.0

The heavy steel door of the industrial meat locker slammed shut, sealing me in at four degrees below zero. Ten minutes ago, I was the woman Dante Moretti promised to burn the world for. Now, I was the rat accused of poisoning his heir. Dante didn’t just lock me in. He looked at me with eyes devoid of warmth and said, "Evidence says otherwise." He chose the lie of his arranged wife, Sofia, over my truth. For months, I endured the price of loving the Underboss. I watched him marry Sofia in a grand ceremony to secure a family alliance. I let him force me onto a table to drain my blood to save her life when she was injured. I took twenty lashes from his family’s enforcers, all while he stood by and watched, claiming it was necessary to "protect" me. He told me to wait. He told me the marriage was a sham. But when I finally escaped and he came chasing after me, revealing that Sofia was a fraud and he wanted me back, I didn't feel relief. I felt nothing. Even after he threw his body over mine to save me from a collapsing building, taking a jagged shard of timber through his chest, I couldn't forgive him. In the hospital, his mother handed me his journal. It was filled with entries about his undying love for me, written on the very same days he allowed me to be tortured. "Tell him the debt is paid," I told his mother as I handed the book back. "He saved my life. I saved his child. We are even." I turned my back on the ICU and walked out into the rain. Dante Moretti might have been willing to die for me, but he never knew how to live for me.

You'll also like

The Mute Heiress's Fake Marriage Pact

The Mute Heiress's Fake Marriage Pact

Alma
5.0

I was finally brought back to the billionaire Vance estate after years in the grimy foster system, but the luxury Lincoln felt more like a funeral procession. My biological family didn't welcome me with open arms; they looked at me like a stain on a silk shirt. They thought I was a "defective" mute with cognitive delays, a spare part to be traded away. Within hours of my arrival, my father decided to sell me to Julian Thorne, a bitter, paralyzed heir, just to secure a corporate merger. My sister Tiffany treated me like trash, whispering for me to "go back to the gutter" before pouring red wine over my dress in front of Manhattan's elite. When a drunk cousin tried to lay hands on me at the engagement gala, my grandmother didn't protect me-she raised her silver-topped cane to strike my face for "embarrassing the family." They called me a sacrificial lamb, laughing as they signed the prenuptial agreement that stripped me of my freedom. They had no idea I was E-11, the underground hacker-artist the world was obsessed with, or that I had already breached their private servers. I found the hidden medical records-blood types A, A, and B-a biological impossibility that proved my "parents" were harboring a scandal that could ruin them. Why bring me back just to discard me again? And why was Julian Thorne, the man supposedly bound to a wheelchair, secretly running miles at dawn on his private estate? Standing in the middle of the ballroom, I didn't plead for mercy. I used a text-to-speech app to broadcast a cold, synthetic threat: "I have the records, Richard. Do you want me to explain genetics to the press, or should we leave quietly?" With the "paralyzed" billionaire as my unexpected accomplice, I walked out of the Vance house and into a much more dangerous game.

Chapters
Read Now
Download Book