Chapter 957:
He looked exactly like his profile picture, his smile still charmingly ingratiating. Yet the first person to appear on the screen wasn’t Rylie—it was Brad, seated casually at the desk. Rylie sat cross-legged on the bed just behind him.
“Well, if it isn’t the renowned admiral,” Tommy remarked, his grin fading as he locked eyes with Rylie. “You did it for him, didn’t you?”
Rylie nodded once. “Then tell me what you found.”
Tommy wet his dry lips and lifted a tablet brimming with annotated screenshots. “I captured several live shots of the ship during the broadcast and cross-checked them against publicly available forum data. Those punks patched up Everswell before showing it, and without a professional eye, not a single flaw would be noticeable in this so-called ‘ruin.’”
“That’s why I came to you. No one’s more skilled,” Rylie said evenly.
Tommy’s face lit with pride, but his triumph was short-lived. A man with an eyepatch shoved his way into view and thumped Tommy lightly on the head. “Don’t flatter yourself,” the newcomer barked. “You were fooled by surface damage and half-baked patch jobs. Name’s VS. I used to take private work for the pirate lord of Eryndor—demolition, structural integrity, that sort of thing. And I’m telling you straight: this vessel didn’t fall to an attack. It was deliberately sabotaged.”
Brad raised a brow, his gaze sliding toward Rylie. “VS?”
Rylie tilted her head slightly, a calm smile ghosting over her lips. “I can hardly use my real name in circles like this, can I?”
Brad’s tone carried a faint tease. “I thought they called you the Healing Hand.”
“Different aliases for different situations,” Rylie replied, composed as ever.
Brad let out a quiet breath, his smile curving with dry amusement. If she wanted to indulge in this elaborate act, he would play along without complaint.
Outside the feed, Tommy jabbed Dudley Crawford hard in the side, a sharp reminder that Rylie was the heiress to Eshea’s most powerful fortune—and the man beside her, a national admiral. If word spread that she had a hand in arms operations, she’d be arrested before the day was out.
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Dudley caught on immediately and steered the topic away. He enlarged the image on the tablet to display the ship’s inner structure. “Look here at these welds, especially around the original ammunition storage corridor and the junctions linking the watertight sections. The report says an external strike caused a sympathetic explosion that spread inward from the hull, correct?”
Dudley let out a derisive laugh, jabbing a thick finger toward the display. “What nonsense! If that explosion really came from outside, the fractures and stress lines in these welds would spread inward. But after scrutinizing the high-res footage frame by frame, it’s plain as day—the distortions and metal strain are pushing outward. The blast originated inside the cabin!”
He swiped to the next image, zooming in on faint stains and strips of blistered paint along the bulkhead—details subtle enough to miss without a meticulous eye. “Look here. And here. See those fine, branching streaks? That’s not corrosion or heat from seawater. Those burn traces came from an intense burst of heat in mere seconds. Only a high-yield, wall-mounted charge could leave a signature like this—spreading in a clear pattern from a single ignition point!”
Tommy leaned closer, his voice brimming with certainty. “An external hit might scorch or pierce the hull, but it couldn’t create these concentrated, classic blast imprints inside an enclosed chamber. Someone planted an explosive aboard the Everswell from the start.”
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