With ten days until the wedding, Mo Chen decided it was time to gather intelligence. She couldn't do this alone. She needed to know the full extent of Julian's plan, his allies, his weaknesses.
But who could she trust? Her family was out of the question. Telling them the truth—that she'd been reborn—would see her institutionalized, leaving Julian free to slaughter them.
There was one person. The one person whose loyalty was absolute, and who operated entirely in the shadows.
Uncle Silas.
Finding him alone was the challenge. He was a ghost, always at her father's side or managing security from an invisible command center. She couldn't just call him. The family's communications, even the "private" lines, were likely monitored by Julian's infiltrators.
She had to get creative. She used a fraction of her personal funds to buy a dozen cheap, untraceable burner phones. Then, she embarked on a day of chaotic, seemingly random burning. She bought and immediately abandoned a fleet of electric scooters in the river. She purchased a pop-up shop's entire inventory of designer clothes and had them shredded.
Her actions were designed to be erratic, the movements of a stressed-out heiress. But within the chaos, there was a pattern. The locations she chose formed a rough circle around the city's central business district, where her father's primary office was located.
At each location, she left a single burner phone, hidden in a specific, pre-arranged spot—a code she and Silas had devised when she was a teenager playing spy games. A flower pot here, a specific air vent there. Each phone contained the same message:
[Uncle Silas. The Thornes are snakes. The wedding is a trap. They plan to kill us all. Gas explosion. West wing. I have proof. I am not crazy. Meet me. Alone. Use this phone. - Your Dawn]
It was a desperate gamble. If he didn't find the phones, or if he dismissed it as part of her "breakdown," she was lost.
That night, as she was burning a stack of antique Persian rugs, one of the burner phones she kept with her vibrated.
A single word appeared on the screen.
[Where?]
Mo Chen's breath hitched. The ghost had answered. She wasn't alone anymore. The first piece of her counter-attack was in place. The real war for her family's survival was about to begin.