Queen Dindu stood in the hallway of her 18th-century mansion in Le Marais, the letter still trembling slightly in her hand. Her assistant, Marcel, waited nearby, sensing her tension but wisely keeping silent. The bold script haunted her. She hadn't seen handwriting like that in years.
She locked herself in her study, a room designed like a fortress—soundproofed, secured, and painted in moody shades of midnight blue. Dindu poured herself a measure of Japanese whiskey, her mind spiraling back to a summer night five years ago. The rooftop. The blood. The pact.
"No one was supposed to know," she whispered.
Across town, Kilopathra's reaction was colder—more calculating.
She held the letter at arm's length like it was contaminated, her expression blank. But her perfectly manicured fingers trembled just enough for her valet to notice. She burned the letter in the marble fireplace of her suite before anyone else could glimpse it.
"They're trying to play with fire," she muttered, watching the ashes curl like serpents. "But I invented the flame."
Still, her next move was cautious. She opened a safe behind an Yves Klein painting and removed an old photograph. Three young women. One night. Smiling, drunk on power and dreams. She traced a finger over their faces—then hesitated over the fourth figure in the photo. A man. Half in shadow. Forgotten by the world but never by them.
Simi, meanwhile, reacted differently. She laughed.
The moment she read the letter, she threw her head back and let out a low, bitter laugh that echoed through her marble-floored penthouse. Her bodyguard, Kwame, stepped into view, but she waved him off.
"They want to scare me with this?" she said, pacing. "Please."
But later that night, after the staff had left and the lights were low, she sat on her bed in silence, rereading a letter she had hidden for years. A letter she'd never shown Dindu or Kilopathra. A confession—written by him. The man who had lied to them all. Loved them all. Used them all.
She hadn't destroyed it. She didn't know why. Maybe because a small part of her still wanted the truth to come out.
And now… someone else wanted the same thing.
Three identical letters.
Three powerful women.
One ghost from the past returning to unravel everything.
The next morning, the women made separate moves—but all toward the same place.
Queen Dindu summoned a hacker from Berlin.
Kilopathra contacted an investigator who owed her a debt.
Simi made a call to a woman no one in Paris dared to speak of: Madame Lys, the secret-keeper of the French elite.
They didn't trust each other anymore.
But they all knew: whatever secret was crawling back from the grave… it could destroy them all.
And someone was counting on it.