The champagne at the engagement gala tasted like victory, but as I stood on the balcony of the Vance Manor, the cold wind felt like a warning. Lucian was inside, surrounded by board members who were already calling him the "Saviour of the Tech Sector."
I should have been happy. But something was clawing at the back of my mind.
"You look like you're waiting for the other shoe to drop," a voice said.
I turned to see Leo, my tech genius and only true friend from my "old life." He wasn't wearing a tuxedo; he was in his usual hoodie, looking out of place among the silk and diamonds. His face was pale.
"Mark is in prison, Leo. Sarah is awaiting trial. What's left to drop?" I asked, trying to sound confident.
Leo handed me a tablet. On the screen was a string of encrypted code the same code I had written for Mark's company years ago. But it was changing.
"I was doing a final sweep of the Thorne-Vance servers before we officially migrated everything to 'Aria Global,'" Leo whispered. "Aria... someone is accessing the 'Black Box' files. From inside the Vance Manor."
My heart stopped. The Black Box contained the blueprints for the global shipping AI I had developed the tech that made my grandfather's empire worth trillions. Only two people had the biometric keys: me and my grandfather.
"Is Silas accessing it?"
"No," Leo said, his fingers flying across the screen. "The logs show a third key. A legacy key registered twenty-five years ago. To someone named Elena Vance."
I felt the air leave my lungs. "Elena? My mother? Leo, my mother died in a car crash when I was five. That's why Grandpa raised me."
"Then a ghost is currently stealing five hundred million dollars from your grandfather's offshore accounts," Leo said, looking up at me with wide eyes. "And Aria... the IP address is moving. It's headed toward the gala."
I looked back into the ballroom. My grandfather was laughing with Lucian, but behind them, near the service entrance, I saw a woman. She was tall, dressed in a sharp black suit, her face partially obscured by a wide-brimmed hat.
She turned her head slightly, and for a split second, I saw a profile that looked exactly like mine only older, colder, and scarred.
She didn't look like a victim. She looked like a predator.
"Lucian!" I shouted, moving toward him, but the lights in the ballroom suddenly flickered and died.
The backup generators kicked in, bathing the room in a haunting red emergency glow. Screams erupted from the socialites. I pushed through the crowd, my heart thumping, but when I reached the spot where the woman had been standing, she was gone.
In her place, pinned to a velvet curtain with a silver dagger, was a single photograph.
It was a picture of me and Mark on our wedding day. But Mark's face had been burned out, and across my face, someone had written in dark, red ink:
"YOU TOOK MY THRONE. NOW I TAKE YOUR LIFE. WELCOME BACK TO THE FAMILY, LITTLE BIRD."
A hand gripped my shoulder, and I almost screamed.
"Aria! It's me," Lucian's voice was dark and protective. He pulled me against his chest, his eyes scanning the room like a hawk. "What happened? Who did this?"
I showed him the photo. I saw the muscles in Lucian's jaw tighten. He didn't look surprised; he looked... guilty.
"Lucian?" I whispered, a new fear taking root. "Who is Elena Vance? And why does it look like you've seen this handwriting before?"
Lucian looked at the dagger, then back at me. "The war with Mark was a playground fight, Aria. Your mother didn't die twenty-five years ago. She was sent away. By my father."
The room seemed to spin. The man I was about to marry, the man I trusted with my life, had been keeping the biggest secret of all. My enemy wasn't just my ex-husband. My enemy was the very blood running through my veins and the history of the man holding me.
"She's coming for us, isn't she?" I asked.
Lucian didn't answer. He just held me tighter as the red lights pulsed like a heartbeat.
The revenge against Mark was over. The war for the Vance legacy had just begun.