Two days after the wedding, Ava awoke to an empty bed and a whisper of cologne on the pillow beside her.
Damian was already gone.
Not unusual. But this time… something felt wrong.
She rolled out of bed, slipping into a silk robe, and padded barefoot into the living room. The penthouse was quiet, sun bleeding in through towering windows. On the kitchen counter, a tablet lay glowing with a single blinking message:
—UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS: Geneva Facility—
—Vault 9: Isabelle Laurent Archive Breach—
—Perpetrator unknown. Entry timed to wedding night.
Ava's blood iced.
No one was supposed to know about Vault 9. It had been hidden beneath layers of legal dead ends and firewalled by Wolfe's private European subsidiary—shut down years ago.
Only she and Damian had access.
Her phone buzzed. Naomi.
"I didn't want to ruin your honeymoon vibe, but we've got a problem."
"Talk."
"Someone pulled every document tied to Arclight from our ghost server in Geneva. But get this—no external IPs. It was rerouted from inside Wolfe Enterprises' Manhattan HQ. Like a ghost inside the walls."
Ava tightened her grip. "And Damian?"
"Missing since 4AM. Security said he left without detail, told them not to follow. That's not like him."
Ava's eyes narrowed. "Pull the last 24 hours of access logs. And Naomi?"
"Yeah?"
"Don't trust anyone. Not even the mirror."
She hung up.
On the coffee table, a thick envelope sat with Damian's seal. Inside: a handwritten note.
If I don't come back by midnight, go to the old elevator shaft in the East Tower. Use the pendant. Don't wait for backup. Don't trust Cecelia. Trust only yourself. This fight started before we met. But it ends with you.
– D
Ava folded the note with trembling hands. Not in fear—no, that emotion no longer fit her.
This was war.
And whoever had breached Vault 9 wasn't just after secrets.
They were after Isabelle's heir.
The East Tower had been closed off for five years—ever since the board declared it "unstable." Ava now knew that was code for classified.
She arrived alone. No bodyguards. No Naomi.
Just the pendant Damian left her—and a rage she kept folded behind her ribs like steel.
A security guard barely looked up. "Ms. Sinclair, this building's—"
She showed the pendant.
His face drained.
"Of course," he said quickly. "Basement sublevel 7. The service lift is still operational."
The elevator groaned as it descended. Every floor brought her deeper below Manhattan's bones. She tried not to think about the last time she was underground—in Lucian's blood-slick bunker.
But this felt… older. Worse.
The door slid open.
Basement 7 was a concrete labyrinth. No windows. Fluorescent lights flickering overhead. The air reeked of old metal and colder memories.
She followed the hallway to a sealed vault door. A biometric scanner blinked red until she pressed the pendant against it.
Click.
The lock released with a hiss.
Inside: a war room. Shadow maps. Surveillance footage. Thousands of files marked in bold red:
—ARCLIGHT—
—BLACK ORCHID—
—PROJECT CIRCE—
Ava stepped forward—and froze.
On the far wall, displayed across a full-length screen, was live footage of Damian.
Tied to a chair. Bloodied lip. Breathing hard.
Opposite him stood a woman in ivory—her face veiled, her presence like smoke.
"I warned you not to follow the ghost," she said on-screen. "But you never learned, did you, Damian? Just like your father."
Ava's pulse spiked.
It wasn't Cecelia.
It wasn't Isabelle.
It was someone older.
"Tell me where she hid the failsafe," the woman hissed. "Or I erase the last Wolfe heir from the record."
Damian spit blood and laughed. "You think she gave it to me?"
The woman smiled.
"No. I think she gave it to the one who just unlocked the vault."
She looked straight at the camera.
Straight at Ava.
And winked.
The room vibrated with power—not the kind Ava could leverage in a boardroom, but the kind that rewrote bloodlines.
She didn't blink. Not when the woman in white winked at her. Not even when Damian, bruised and still defiant, mouthed two words before the feed cut to black:
"Don't come."
Too late.
Ava crossed to the console and accessed the encrypted index. The vault's operating system was older than Wolfe's mainframe—likely untouched since before Cecelia's reign. But the interface was intuitive. Feminine. Precise.
ARCLIGHT: FILE 9C – CIRCE
She clicked.
A hologram lit the room.
A woman—not the one from the screen—appeared in grainy projection. Her voice trembled with controlled power.
"If you're watching this, I'm dead. And that means Circe has begun."
The woman's features sharpened. Ava staggered back.
It was Isabelle Laurent.
"Project Circe was never about succession. It was about annihilation. The end of bloodline rule. Of puppet empires. Arclight wasn't meant to protect power. It was meant to erase it. Piece by piece. Family by family."
A pause.
"You, Ava, are not my successor. You are my replacement. My improvement. My final gamble."
"She's coming for you now. The one who created Arclight. My mentor. My enemy. The one they buried in the shareholder ledger under twelve pseudonyms."
"Codename: Solene."
The name hit like a bullet between Ava's ribs.
She'd heard it once—whispered in a Wolfe boardroom, passed between old men like folklore.
Solene wasn't a person.
She was a ghost. A threat parents used to scare their legacy heirs.
Ava swallowed hard.
She was real.
And she had Damian.
The vault lights flickered. The air chilled.
And then, behind her, a soft voice spoke:
"Well done, Ava. You opened the right door. But can you close the wrong one?"
She turned.
There she was.
Solene.
No longer a flicker on a screen. No longer a whisper in the dark.
Face uncovered. Eyes like frost and fire.
And on her wrist, the mirror-scar—gleaming like a crown.
Ava stood frozen as Solene stepped from the shadows, graceful as a dagger unsheathed.
Her presence was terrifying not because of her rage, but because of her stillness. There was no bluster. No threat. Just inevitability.
Solene circled the vault like it belonged to her.
It probably did.
"Damian always did have his father's arrogance," she said softly. "And his mother's blind spot. He believes love is protection. But love is leverage."
Ava didn't flinch. "Where is he?"
Solene smiled. "Alive. For now. I need him alive—he still holds one key I require. You hold the other."
She raised her hand. A projection lit the air: Wolfe's global holdings… shifting, flickering, collapsing. As if the entire empire was already on fire.
"This empire is rotting, Ava. You see it, don't you? The corruption beneath the gloss. The board. The foundations. The legacy wolves snapping at your heels."
"I already dismantled half of them."
"You scratched the surface." Solene's eyes glinted. "I want to burn the carcass. Salt the bones. And rebuild something truer."
Ava stared her down. "Then why not kill me?"
"Because you're my successor," Solene said simply. "Not Isabelle's. Mine."
The words landed like thunder.
"I've watched you. From the moment you walked into Wolfe's lobby with your sharp little spine and clipped ambition. You don't want power to rule, Ava. You want it to end the game. That's what I want too."
She paused. "But to do that, you have to make one trade."
Ava's voice dropped. "Damian."
Solene nodded.
"You give me his key. His share. His name. I give you the blueprints to dismantle Wolfe, Arclight, and every legacy cartel buried in its roots. You'll become something no woman has ever been in this world."
She stepped closer.
"Free."
Ava didn't speak.
Not for ten full heartbeats.
Because part of her wanted it. The power. The vengeance. The final breath of every ghost that had ever whispered know your place.
But another part—a softer, more dangerous one—was already imagining how Damian's hands had trembled when he wrote that note.
Don't trust Cecelia.
Don't trust anyone.
Trust only yourself.
Solene tilted her head.
"Well?"
And Ava, voice like silk hiding a sword, whispered:
"I'm not giving you Damian Wolfe."