Kilopathra stood at the top of the grand staircase in her fashion palace, Maison Kilopathra, watching models glide below her like chess pieces. They wore her latest collection—powerful silhouettes in blood-red silk and onyx lace. The show was flawless. The world saw an empire in bloom.
But behind the shimmering fabric, cracks were forming.
She descended slowly, her heels echoing with deliberate grace, and whispered to her creative director, "Double the security. No one gets backstage without clearance. Not even God."
"Yes, Madame," he stuttered, then vanished.
In her private dressing room, she found a folder already waiting on her vanity. Her investigator, Henri Vallois, never knocked. Just delivered. Inside were surveillance stills—Queen Dindu photographed at an underground bar two nights ago. Simi slipping into an unmarked car with someone from Interpol.
Kilopathra narrowed her eyes.
"So they've started digging too," she murmured. "Perfect."
She turned over the last photo: an image of an older man, face wrinkled, eyes sunken, emerging from a monastery in Corsica. The man they thought was dead. The man they'd buried in silence.
His name was Ayo Mendoza.
He had once loved all three of them. And betrayed them in the worst way.
She hadn't seen his face in five years.
Until now.
Meanwhile, in a nondescript loft on the Left Bank, Queen Dindu watched lines of code cascade across a dozen black monitors. Her hacker, Klaus, a tatted genius with a nicotine habit, worked with the rhythm of a pianist.
"I traced the message," he said. "Encrypted through seven servers. The final signal bounced from—guess where?"
"Don't make me guess," Dindu snapped, arms folded.
Klaus turned, lighting a cigarette. "Simi's building."
She froze.
"Her own network?" Dindu whispered. "She wouldn't..."
Klaus shrugged. "Or someone inside her empire. You've got enemies, Dindu. And not just in Paris."
Dindu's mind raced. Simi wouldn't send the letter—unless she was trying to shake them. Force their hand. Or… warn them?
She needed to know what Simi remembered.
And more importantly—what Simi planned to do about it.
That night, Simi didn't sleep.
She sat in her glass-walled study overlooking the Champs-Élysées, fingering a black locket around her neck. Inside was a lock of hair—his. Ayo's. She had cut it herself the night he died… or the night she thought he had died.
Ayo had promised her everything. Love. Safety. Forever. He had whispered the same lies to Kilopathra and Dindu. Played them against one another. Stolen from all three.
And when they found out—when the truth came to light—he vanished.
Now someone wanted the past exhumed.
Simi stood and walked to the window. Her reflection stared back: fierce, poised, untouchable. But beneath it, fear simmered like lava.
If Ayo was alive, then someone had helped him disappear.
And she intended to find out who.
Even if it meant going back to the one place she swore she'd never return—
The Garden of Mirrors.
Where it all began.