The Nerd Who Stole The Quarterback (Astra and Zayne) novel Chapter 174

The Nerd Who Stole The Quarterback

The Most Dangerous Version

ASTRA

My breath caught the second the door began to open.

For one suspended second the hallway beyond was nothing but darkness.

Then a tall figure stepped through, and the world narrowed to the familiar lines of him.

Landon Ashton.

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He looked exactly as he always had, impeccably dressed in a charcoal overcoat, shoulders squared with the confidence of a man who walked into rooms and owned them without trying

But it seemed like the last few days had left their mark.

There was a tiredness in him that had nothing to do with lack of sleep, something older carved into the set of his jaw and the faint shadows under his eyes.

The moment he crossed the threshold his gaze swept the room and found me almost at once.

“…Astra.”

My name left him in a hushed breath, and the sound of it shattered something carefully held together inside my chest.

Fresh tears blurred my vision before I could stop them. I hadn’t realized how desperately I had needed to hear a familiar voice until that single word reached me.

I tried to speak, but only a choked breath came out.

For one terrifying, hopeful moment it looked as though he might come straight toward me.

I could almost feel the warmth of him already, the solid, living proof that I had not been abandoned in this place.

Silas spoke before Landon could take another step.

“Mr. Ashton.”

His tone remained pleasant, and conversational.

“If you take another step toward her without my permission… our evening will end much sooner than either of us would like.”

Landon stopped.

His eyes had already found the pistol resting casually in Silas’s hand.

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His jaw tightened, the only outward sign that he understood the new rules of this room.

“I came alone,” he said evenly. “Just as you asked.”

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“I can see that.” Silas sounded genuinely pleased. “Thank you.” He gestured toward the empty chair positioned several feet from mine. “Please. Sit.”

Landon didn’t move immediately. His gaze remained fixed on me, searching.

“Astra.” His voice softened. “Are you hurt?”

I shook my head quickly, even as the ropes burned against my wrists and my entire body still trembled with residual adrenaline. “N-no… I’m okay.”

It wasn’t entirely true but I was alive. And somehow, seeing him standing there, solid, and real made surviving feel possible again.

Silas chuckled quietly, looking almost offended.

“I told her I wouldn’t hurt her. I’ve kept my word.”

Only then did Landon finally lower himself into the chair, but he never took his eyes off Silas.

Neither man spoke for several long seconds. The silence stretched until it became almost unbearable, heavy with everything left unsaid.

Then Silas smiled.

“You know…” He folded his hands neatly in front of him, the pistol still resting within easy reach. “I imagined this moment hundreds of times. Sometimes you apologized, other times you begged.” A soft laugh escaped him. “And sometimes… you didn’t remember me at all.”

Landon’s expression never changed.

“I remember your name.”

“… Do you?”

Landon held his gaze without flinching.

“Silas Mercer.”

The room fell silent.

Silas closed his eyes and a slow breath escaped him. When he opened them again, the smile that returned was no longer warm or pleasant. It was the smile of a man who had finally gotten exactly what he had waited years to hear.

“Good,” he whispered. His fingers tightened around the pistol. “So… let’s begin.”

Landon sat back slowly, resting one ankle over the opposite knee with a composure that looked almost

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effortless.

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“You went through a lot of trouble to get me here,” he said coolly. “Years, from the sound of it. That tells me this isn’t about impulse.”

Silas’s smile spread. “No. Impulse is for men who still believe the system might correct itself.”

“And you don’t.”

“I did once.”

Landon gave a small nod, as if that answer mattered. “Then help me understand the part that still doesn’t make sense.” His voice stayed calm “You could have come after me directly. You could have chosen any number of ways to force a confrontation. Why involve a teenage girl who had nothing to do with Ashton Global?”

For the first time, something flickered across Silas’s face, not anger, but the mild irritation of a man being asked to explain the obvious.

“Because you don’t walk into rooms for ordinary problems,” he said. “You send lawyers. You send security and…..money.” His eyes drifted briefly toward me, then returned to Landon. “But a missing girl? That brings the man himself.”

Landon’s gaze didn’t leave him. “So she was leverage.”

“She was necessary.”

“She’s a child.”

Silas tilted his head. “She’s eighteen. And more importantly… she mattered to people close to you. That made her useful.”

Landon leaned forward slightly. “You wanted me to say your name. I did. You wanted me to sit across from you. I’m here. What happens after acknowledgment, Silas?”

Silas stared at him for a long moment.

“After acknowledgment,” he said softly, “comes consequence.”

Silas’s fingers drummed once against the side of the gun.

“And it’s simple,” he said. “You take responsibility.”

Landon didn’t blink. “For what, exactly?”

“For destroying my life.”

“I terminated an employee whose performance had collapsed,” Landon replied, still calm. “That is not the same thing as destroying a life.”

A muscle jumped in Silas’s jaw.

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“You signed the paper.”

“I signed many papers.”

“You ended twenty-two years of work like it meant nothing.”

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“I ended an employment contract after repeated failures that put projects – and people – at risk.” Landon’s voice remained even, almost clinical. “What happened to your marriage after that was not in my control.”

The temperature in the room seemed to drop.

Silas’s smile had vanished completely.

“Say that again.”

Landon held his gaze. “Your wife left you. Your children stopped calling. That grief is real. But it is not something I did to you.”

Silas stood up so abruptly the chair scraped against the concrete.

His face had begun to flush, the calm mask cracking at the edges.

“You don’t get to decide what you are responsible for,” he said, voice tighter now. “You sat in a glass office and erased me. Everything that followed came from that moment. You don’t get to wash your hands of it because it makes you uncomfortable.”

“I’m not uncomfortable,” Landon said. “I’m accurate.”

Silas let out a short, sharp breath that was almost a laugh and not humorous at all.

“You arrogant..” He stopped himself, breathing heavily. When he spoke again, the politeness was gone. “You will admit it. You will say that your decision ruined me. That you threw away a man who had given his life to that company. That the consequences were yours.”

Landon’s answer was immediate.

“No.”

The word landed like a slap.

Silas’s face deepened another shade of red. His grip on the gun tightened until his knuckles whitened.

“You don’t get to refuse.”

“I do,” Landon said quietly. “Because it isn’t true. I will not confess to a version of events that exists only in your head.”

For the first time since Landon had entered the room, Silas looked truly unstable.

The twisted paternal softness he had used with me, and the almost gentle lectures, all of it was burning away, leaving something rawer underneath.

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He took one step closer to Landon, the gun still angled more toward me than toward him.

“You will say it,” he whispered.

Landon didn’t move.

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“No,” he repeated. “I will not.”

Silas’s breathing had grown audible.

And in the heavy silence that followed, I realized the most dangerous version of him was no longer the calm man who wiped my tears.

It was the one standing in front of us now…

red-faced, trembling with years of stored fury, and holding a GUN.

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10:23 Fri, Aug 7

The Nerd Who Stole The Quarterback

I’m Getting My Girl

ZANE

:

The SUV sat dead still in the dark, engine off, windows sealed.

2)

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No one risked the sound of a shifting seat or a breath drawn too loud. The only thing alive inside the vehicle was the radio clipped to Detective Riggs’ vest.

Landon’s voice came through first.

“…I will not confess to a version of events that exists only in your head.”

My jaw locked so hard the muscle there jumped and Jason swore under his breath.

Riggs kept his eyes on the windshield like the glass might hold the operation together if he stared hard enough.

“Quiet,” he said.

The radio crackled again. Silas’s voice had shed every trace of the polite mask. What came through now was pure, rising rage.

“You will say it!”

I leaned forward until the seat belt cut into my chest. “Tell him.”

No one answered.

I turned my head toward Riggs. “Tell him to fucking apologize.”

Riggs didn’t look at me. “He knows what he’s doing.”

A short, ugly laugh tore out of me. “Does he?”

Silence answered.

The radio hissed once more.

“…No.”

Landon.

Still choosing the high ground while my girl sat tied to a chair on the other end of that feed.

Something in my chest snapped clean.

“What the fuck is wrong with him?”

Jason twisted in the passenger seat. “Zane…”

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“No.” I slammed my fist into the dashboard hard enough that Riggs flinched and the impact rattled up my

arm.

“My Trouble is tied to a fucking chair while this psychopath loses his mind, and he’s arguing semantics?”

Riggs finally turned to me. “Mr. Ashton cannot admit criminal responsibility for something he didn’t..”

“I don’t give a shit.” The words exploded through the confined space. “I don’t care if he has to tell Mercer he’s the fucking Tooth Fairy. If apologizing gets Astra out of there, then he apologizes.”

Suddenly a crash came through from the radio, like a piece of furniture or a body hitting the floor hard enough to shake the feed.

Astra’s sharp gasp filled my ears. Silas’s shout followed, raw and unhinged.

“You will apologize!”

Another crash and something tipped and kept falling.

My heart stopped mid-beat.

I was already reaching for the door handle when Riggs’s hand closed around my forearm.

“No.”

I ripped free. “No?”

A disbelieving, half-mad laugh escaped me. “Did you not just hear that?”

“A tactical team is in position.”

“And she’s in there!”

Another thud punched through the speaker. Someone shouted, Landon this time, the sound stripped of all that careful control.

That was all it took.

I grabbed the handle again. Riggs was faster, fingers locking in the fabric of my jacket.

“Sit down!”

I shoved him off hard enough that his shoulder hit the seat back. “You can arrest me later.”

My fingers wrapped around the cold metal of the handle.

“I’m getting my girl.”

But Riggs caught my jacket again.

I tore free so hard the stitching ripped clean through the shoulder.

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The door flew open and the cool air hit my face like a slap.

“Zane!”

Jason’s door slammed open behind me. “Zane, wait…!”

“Stop him!” Riggs barked into his radio. “Ashton’s on foot! Repeat-Ashton is on foot!”

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I didn’t look back. The trees closed around me in seconds, branches whipping across my face and arms as I cut between them.

Boots crashed through the undergrowth somewhere behind me, but the sound stayed distant.

My lungs burned with every move.

Voices crackled through hidden radios ahead.

“… Team Two in position.”

“…North perimeter secure.”

Good.

That meant I was close.

A dark figure stepped out from behind an oak, rifle already raised.

“Stop!”

One of Hayes’s tactical officers.

He reached for me, but I slammed my shoulder into his chest, sending him stumbling sideways into the leaves.

“Shit…!”

I kept moving.

Finally, the house came into view at last, nestled among the trees.

Warm light glowed behind drawn curtains, and a chain-link fence enclosed the entire property.

I ducked behind a fallen log, forcing myself to breathe through the burn in my chest as I studied the place.

The front gate was out of the question. A surveillance camera watched the entrance while another, mounted beneath the roofline, swept slowly across the driveway.

My gaze followed the fence instead, searching for something they’d overlooked.

There.

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The rear corner backed into thick woodland where the pines grew so close together their branches swallowed the fence in shadow.

I kept low and worked my way through the trees until I reached it.

Up close, the fence stood a little higher than I was, but it would have to do. I gripped the wire, found my footing in the mesh, and hauled myself upward.

The metal creaked beneath my weight. I swung one leg over the top and dropped into the backyard, landing as quietly as I could.

I froze for a moment but nothing.

No alarm. No shouting. Only the faint murmur of voices drifting from somewhere inside the house.

I looked toward the back door. Then toward the glowing downstairs window.

The backyard stretched wider than I’d expected. Whoever built this place had money to burn, stone paving curved around the rear of the house, giving way to carefully trimmed hedges and tall ornamental shrubs that rose almost to my shoulders.

Perfect cover.

I slipped behind them and dropped into a crouch.

A sharp crash echoed through the house.

I flinched, then forced myself forward again.

I agree. It feels choppy because almost every sentence is a fragment. You can keep the urgency while making it flow more naturally.

The back door came into view.

Locked.

I expected as much, but I tested the handle anyway. It didn’t budge.

My gaze moved across the wall, taking in the row of windows. Every curtain had been pulled shut except one, where a gap barely two fingers wide let a sliver of light spill through.

I crept closer, placing each step with care.

The voices inside grew clearer.

“…Say it you motherfucker!”

Silas.

Landon’s reply followed, too quiet for me to make out.

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I leaned toward the gap.

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At first I caught only pieces of the room, the concrete floor, the leg of a chair, the blur of a blond head.

Silas.

Where was she?

I edged closer.

The curtain shifted.

And then I saw her.

My Trouble.

Bound to a chair, tears streaking her face. The ropes around her wrists had been pulled so tight they had already bitten into her skin, leaving angry red welts.

Everything else disappeared.

Mine.

Mine.

Mine.

My hand was already on the back-door handle before I realized what I was doing.

Locked.

“Fuck.”

I took a step back, then another, every muscle in my body coiling to drive straight through the glass.

A hand clamped over my mouth.

An arm locked around my chest, hauling me hard against a solid body.

“Don’t.”

Detective Riggs.

His voice was barely audible against my ear.

“If you go through that window…” His grip tightened. “…you’ll get her killed.”

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The Nerd Who Stole The Quarterback

You Lied

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ASTRA

“Stop!”

The scream ripped out of me before I even realized I’d made a sound.

A metal chair lay overturned. One of the monitors had been knocked from the desk, its shattered screen spitting the occasional spark while coffee spread across the concrete, carrying shards of broken ceramic with

Silas had Landon pinned beneath him.

He straddled his waist, chest heaving, blond hair hanging over his face. His sweater had torn at one shoulder, the sleeve smeared with blood-some of it his own. A bruise had already darkened along his cheek where Landon’s fist had landed.

Landon looked worse.

Blood poured from a gash at his hairline, running down the side of his face before dripping onto the floor. Judging by the wound, Silas had struck him with the butt of the pistol more than once.

I fought the ropes with everything I had.

Silas grabbed Landon’s coat and slammed him back against the concrete.

“You arrogant bastard!” he screamed, spittle flying. “I gave you one chance!”

Landon grimaced, a strained breath escaping him, but he never cried out. Blood trickled into one eye. Even so, when he looked back at Silas, there wasn’t a trace of fear.

“You’ve mistaken revenge,” he rasped, “for justice.”

Whatever restraint Silas had left vanished.

“No!”

He raised the pistol again.

“Please!” I threw myself against the ropes so hard the chair skidded across the floor. The restraints cut deeper into my wrists, but I barely felt them. “Please don’t! Stop hurting him!”

Silas froze.

He looked at me.

His breathing was still uneven, yet when he spoke, his voice had softened into something almost unbearably gentle.

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“Astra…” A pained smile touched his lips. “I’m sorry you’re seeing this.”

He meant it.

“As soon as he tells the truth…” His attention shifted back to Landon. “…this will all be over.”

Landon spat blood onto the floor.

“It won’t.”

Silas’s jaw tightened.

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“Why?” For the first time, he sounded as though he genuinely wanted an answer. “Why can’t you just admit what you did?”

Slowly, Landon lifted his head.

Even with the pistol aimed at him, he refused.

“I won’t confess,” he said, forcing the words past a mouthful of blood, “to something that isn’t true.”

Silas stared at him.

Then, with a roar that barely sounded human, he swung the pistol down.

Landon’s hand shot up, catching Silas’s wrist before the blow could land. For an instant they remained locked together, every muscle straining as the gun shook violently between them.

Then Landon wrenched his arm aside.

Silas shouted as his grip broke. The pistol flew free, skidding across the concrete and spinning to a stop near the overturned chair-still far too close for comfort, but no longer in his hand.

Landon didn’t hesitate. His fist drove into Silas’s jaw.

The blow threw Silas sideways. He hit the floor hard as Landon pushed himself upright, one hand braced against the concrete while blood continued to stream from the gash at his temple.

Silas scrambled back on his hands, breathing unevenly, panic flashing across his face.

“No…”

Landon swiped the blood from his eye with the back of his wrist and looked at him.

“I’m sorry I never realized how much you were struggling. I’m sorry no one stepped in before you reached this point. I’m sorry the system failed you long before it failed anyone else.”

He drew a slow breath.

“But I won’t apologize for removing a man who was no longer fit to do the job. It wasn’t done out of spite. It was the only responsible choice.”

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Silas only stared.

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Whatever was holding him together gave way. His breathing turned ragged and a strangled sound escaped him as both hands came up to cover his face.

“You don’t get to be kind now,” he whispered. “You don’t get to sound human after all these years.”

Landon stayed where he was. He made no move toward the gun.

“I am human,” he said. “That was never the disagreement.”

Silas slowly lowered his hands. Tears had carved pale tracks through the blood and grime on his face.

Then, almost without thinking, his eyes shifted toward the pistol lying on the floor.

His gaze lingered there.

Then, slowly, he looked back at Landon.

For a single second, I thought-I actually thought-he was going to surrender. His shoulders sagged and the rage seemed to drain out of him so completely that only exhaustion remained.

“I gave twenty-two years,” he said quietly. His voice barely sounded like the same man’s anymore. “Twenty- two years…”

He laughed, a hollow sound.

“I missed birthdays. Anniversaries. School plays. I told myself it would all be worth it because I was building something that mattered.” His eyes lifted to Landon’s. “And then one signature…” He snapped his fingers. “… and I was nothing.”

Landon didn’t interrupt.

“When they fired me,” Silas continued, “I kept waking up at six every morning.” Another laugh escaped him. “I’d put on my tie. I’d drive halfway to the office before remembering… I didn’t work there anymore.”

The room fell silent. Even my own breathing felt too loud.

Landon spoke carefully. “You should have been helped.”

Silas gave a weary smile. “That’s the first true thing you’ve said tonight.”

Another long silence settled between them.

“But Astra doesn’t deserve to become another casualty of this.”

Silas didn’t answer.

“You know that.” Still nothing. “You’ve protected her this entire time.” That made Silas blink. “You fed her. You bought her clothes. You made sure she wasn’t harmed.” Landon’s voice remained calm. “Don’t let tonight erase the only decent choices you’ve made.”

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For just an instant, Silas looked shaken. His eyes drifted toward me, then to the ropes around my wrists.

Then the tiny earpiece hidden beneath Landon’s collar crackled.

It was faint, almost impossible to hear. But in the dead silence, Silas heard it.

His head snapped up. His eyes locked on Landon’s collar.

Everything changed.

“What…” His face drained of color. “…what was that?”

Landon didn’t answer.

Silas took one slow step backward. “No…” Another. “No.”

Then his eyes shot toward the pistol.

Realization exploded across his face.

“You lied.”

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