Three hundred wealthy guests watched a maid stop Vanessa’s attack with one hand, never realizing the woman in the gray uniform had once been trained to dismantle dangerous threats. / Chapter 105 / 130

Chapter 105 - The Architect’s Confession

Naomi pushed the blast door open with the muzzle of her weapon, keeping the sight aligned directly with the center of Arthur Sterling’s chest. Vanessa stepped into the room behind her, her eyes wide with betrayal.

"Father..." Vanessa’s voice shook. "Tell me she's lying."

Arthur finally turned around. He held a sleek biometric datapad in his left hand, while his right rested calmly inside the pocket of his trousers. His expression was not that of a cornered villain, but of an irritated CEO whose project had encountered an inconvenient delay.

"Lying? Naomi doesn't possess the imagination to lie, my dear," Arthur said smoothly, looking at Vanessa with a patronizing tilt of his head. "She is a machine. A masterfully sculpted, genetically optimized instrument of defense and diplomacy. When you spilled that wine at the gala, Vanessa, and tried to humiliate her, you were kicking a weapon that cost forty million dollars to engineer."

"You made us monsters," Naomi said, her grip tightening on the trigger.

"We made you survivors!" Arthur snapped, his aristocratic veneer cracking slightly to reveal a terrifying zeal. "The world is crumbling, Naomi. The geopolitical order is rotting from within. When the collapse comes, the elites will not be protected by treaties or police forces. We require absolute, unbreakable fidelity. Women who can smile, pour tea, organize a state dinner, and quietly snap the necks of ten assassins before dessert is served!"

"And what about the other 312?" Naomi stepped forward, the laser sight steady on his heart. "The ones you just turned into mindless butchers across Philadelphia?"

"A field test," Arthur shrugged, casually tapping the datapad. "A demonstration for our international investors. To prove that with a single broadcast, the entire domestic infrastructure of any major city can be mobilized as a private garrison."

"You're insane," Vanessa whispered, raising her gun with both hands. "You turned our home into a slaughterhouse!"

Arthur smiled coldly at his daughter. "You think you're holding a weapon, Vanessa? You haven't looked at the terminal screen, have you?"

Naomi’s gaze flickered to the massive server wall behind Arthur. On the central monitor, a genealogical schematic was actively processing. Across the top, two names flashed beneath the red banner of the Apex Project: