Chapter 418
Beau stared blankly at Elara as she desperately sawed at the ropes binding Xavier. Xavier couldn’t possibly escape the closet without cutting them.
Xavier began coughing uncontrollably. Elara immediately stripped off her outer layer and poured the remaining water from her thermos onto the fabric.
She wrapped the soaked garment around Xavier’s head, covering his nose and mouth. The cloth obscured half his face, leaving only his wide, panicked eyes visible as he watched Elara struggle with the ropes.
“Elara, you need to evacuate now!” Theodore’s voice came through the phone’s speaker, laced with uncharacteristic agitation.
With no cameras in the second–floor rooms, Theodore could only monitor the hallway footage from his car. He pieced together Elara’s situation solely through the phone conversation between her and Beau.
Even as he spoke, his slender fingers flew across the keyboard. The surveillance system itself remained intact, and the missing footage resulted from someone disabling the recording function.
But the monitoring chips contained a backdoor that temporarily stored one hour of video as backup.
The computer’s cold glow illuminated Theodore’s striking features, casting an eerie light across his eyes. He waited impatiently for his crawling program to retrieve the auditorium’s surveillance footage.
Just then, Elara’s voice crackled through his phone once more. “Xavier’s trapped! Theodore, guide Beau out of the auditorium first!”
Elara’s words dissolved into coughing as the toxic air assaulted her lungs. Carbon monoxide levels had reached critical thresholds–they couldn’t remain in this environment much longer.
“I’m sending backup! Get Beau out now!” Theodore’s voice crackled through the phone.
Elara gritted her teeth, her fingers turning white from straining against the ropes. “I won’t abandon Xavier!”
She said “won’t“, not “can’t“, as the very thought of leaving Xavier behind while she and Beau escaped violated every moral fiber of her being. She could never tell Xavier, “Just wait here, someone will come for you soon.” Elara staggered to her feet and wrenched open a window, creating an air current to buy precious time. “Mommy, just leave Xavier!” Beau’s eyebrows knitted together in frustration. “He’ll be fine!”
This was his fire after all. Fisher Corp employees would never let actual harm come to him. Ralph had guaranteed the flames would stay controlled, contained within safe parameters.
“Beau, go ahead! Mommy will get Xavier out right after you‘
With her back turned, Elara missed the dark impatience twisting Beau’s features.
In this life–or–death moment, she no longer cared about her son’s resentment or anything hurtful he’d said or done. As long as Beau could survive–that was all that mattered.
Staying alive trumped everything else! The same principle applied to Xavier.
How could she possibly leave? How could she abandon Xavier–bound and trapped in that closet?
Xavier couldn’t even speak. What chance did he have to save himself?
Beau pressed the handkerchief tighter over his nose and mouth, his brow furrowing deeply, Memories of his time with Xavier flashed through his mind–Xavier constantly yielding to him, even feigning illness to skip elite
Chapter 418
training courses just to avoid outshining him.
Yet whenever Beau faced the tutors alone, he still heard t become the gold standard.
“Mommy! Tell me if only one of us could live, who wou
