The flames were already licking the sky when Vivienne returned to Rosemoor.
Columns of smoke coiled into the dawn like specters clawing at the heavens. The main gate was split open, the marble lion statues on either side blackened with soot. Fire trucks had arrived too late. Too deliberately late.
Vivienne stood at the edge of the driveway, frozen, Damien's hand tight on her shoulder.
"It was a message," he said, low and cold.
"No," she replied, voice tight. "It was a warning."
The manor that had stood for generations—walls filled with secrets, halls lined with whispers—was now nothing but charred timber and collapsed grandeur. The garden where she had once laid out war plans beneath moonlight was a skeleton of ash and melted iron.
It was her legacy, burned.
But it would not be her defeat.
A uniformed fire captain approached with a bowed head. "Miss D'Arcy, I'm sorry. The blaze started from within. Accelerants were found in three wings. No staff were harmed. They weren't scheduled to arrive until later."
"They knew my schedule," Vivienne murmured.
Damien looked grim. "Valentin has his hands deeper in this city than we thought."
She turned away from the destruction, the scent of smoke clinging to her skin like a curse. "He thinks he can erase me just like that."
Damien handed her the velvet pouch, still containing the USB Margot had given them. "He erased your house. Not your fire."
They drove to a safehouse in Montreuil—one of her father's lesser-known holdings hidden behind a bookstore facade. It smelled of ink and cedar, and it welcomed her like a forgotten memory.
That night, she plugged the drive into an encrypted terminal.
Lines of code burst across the screen. Passwords. Off-shore accounts. Surveillance files. Timestamps and transactions. Names. So many names.
Politicians. Judges. Officers. And Valentin.
At the heart of it all: Project Lys—an operation laundering money through humanitarian fronts, backed by armed enforcement under the cover of peacekeeping.
Vivienne's heart raced. Her mother's name—Amelia Laurent—appeared in the classified logs.
"'Target: Compromised. Status: Eliminated,'" she read aloud.
Damien stepped closer. "They killed her?"
"No they didn't kill her," Vivienne whispered, staring at the file path. "But they tried to."
There was a secondary note.
Asset remains off-grid. Flagged as a dormant threat. Retaliation pending.
"She's alive," Vivienne said, breathless. "Somewhere out there. She disappeared to protect me."
Damien's jaw clenched. "Then Valentin destroyed Rosemoor trying to find out what she left behind."
Vivienne looked down at the blackened photograph of her childhood—rescued from the wreckage.
"My mother gave me her name," she said. "She gave me her fire, her war."
She stood tall, head high.
"Now I will give her vengeance."
Author Nvlls note
I hope you all are loving the book so far. I will make sure to publish at least 3 chapters, everyday, five days a week. Let's hope for the best and wish Vivenne luck. But in all would she reunite with her mother?