The Billionaire's Fake Girlfriend Chapter 4: Chapter 4

Read chapter 4 of The Billionaire's Fake Girlfriend by tamannaislam on NovelPedia.

Chapter 4: Limousine Logic (Ethan’s POV) I violently dragged Ava back through the secondary service exit before the panicked gasps could alter her facial expression in front of the nearby reporters. The heavy glass balcony doors slammed shut behind us, cutting off the low rumble of the high society ballroom layout. Ava’s entire body was shaking, her fingers sinking into the lapels of my tuxedo jacket as she held up the glowing phone screen. The real time surveillance stream of Noah was still running, the crimson laser tracking dot dancing mockingly across the center of the boy's chest. "Ethan, they are going to kill him," she choked out, her witty armor completely dissolving to reveal a raw, suffocating terror. "I need to take the ledger sheets to the dockside warehouse. Right now." "If you walk into that terminal alone, Kane will liquidate you both before the midnight trading block opens," I stated flatly, my baritone dropping to a freezing, commanding whisper as I pinned her shoulders gently against the concrete wall of the corridor to ground her. "Look at me, Ava. He uses this extreme leverage because he does not possess the physical asset validation codes. It is a bluff to force an immediate capitulation." Our faces were mere inches apart, our frantic breaths mingling in the narrow, dim corridor. The scent of expensive sandalwood and her faint citrus perfume clashed violently in the small space, creating an intense, hyper charged proximity that threatened to shatter my remaining clinical control. For a fraction of a second, my focus dropped to her lips, a sudden dangerous variable screaming that my protective instinct had completely broken past the parameters of the contract. Before the tension could swallow our alignment, Daniel Ross burst through the service door, his smartphone terminal actively streaming active network tracking telemetry. "Ethan, the security teams have established an immediate local perimeter lockdown on Noah's university campus sector," Daniel reported, his fingers flying across the touch interface. "But the video transmission bypasses our standard firewall encryptions. The routing signature is exceptionally clean." Sophia Bennett stepped out from the adjacent pantry hallway, her face twisted into a flawless expression of panicked best friend devotion. She immediately wrapped her arms around a trembling Ava, offering soft words of grounding comfort. "Ava, oh my god, I just saw the news alerts about the corporate asset freeze," Sophia whispered, her eyes tracking the phone screen with a sharp, hidden intensity that I didn't completely like. "You need to pull out of this toxic Blackwood agreement before your entire family pays the price for their wealth." "The agreement stands, Sophia," I cut her off, my voice falling into a cold, unyielding barrier that brooked zero domestic interference. "Daniel, mobilize the primary armored command sedan to the lower executive staging bay. We are pulling back to the penthouse safe house immediately." We navigated the concrete stairwells in total silence, the heavy atmosphere thick with an invisible, tightening net. The moment we boarded the rear passenger cabin of the armored command vehicle, the pressurized doors shut with a solid, absolute thud that severed the exterior noise of the pavilion. Ava sat directly across from me, her white knuckles clutching her father's leather journal against her ribs like a physical shield. Daniel fired up the front terminal systems, the primary digital display booting up to scan our local communication frequencies for unauthorized bugs. A sharp, high pitched system alert suddenly shrieked across the dashboard panel, a bright red warning block flashing violently against the dark interface layout. I leaned forward, my fingers locking onto the back of the driver's seat as the forensic data stream completed its automatic decryption path. The system tracking logs mapped the exact origin point of the video stream that had targeted Noah's