The gates of the Sterling estate opened without a word.
No guards. No hounds. No standoff.
Only silence.
The kind reserved for cathedrals—or tombs.
The car rolled up the hill's gravel path, winding past manicured hedges and artificial waterfalls, until it reached the portico of the main mansion. The fountain in the courtyard had been shut off. Black drapes fluttered against every window.
The patriarch was dying.
And the house already knew.
Silas stepped out first, face carved in steel. His hand hovered instinctively near the weapon holster beneath his coat, though they both knew it wouldn't help. What they faced now was not firepower, but legacy.
Sienna followed.
She didn't wear mourning black.
She wore white.
Crisp. Clean. Surgical.
A reminder.
The butler nodded solemnly and led them through the grand hall to the east wing, where the family's private medical suite lay shrouded in dim yellow light.
Inside, Adrian Sterling Sr. lay on the last bed he would ever know.
The machines keeping him alive clicked and hissed like dying lungs. His face had collapsed in on itself, skin drawn thin across brittle bones. A breathing mask covered most of his mouth. His eyelids fluttered.
But he was awake.
Barely.
And when he saw Silas, something like recognition passed through the cataracts of his stare.
Silas stepped closer. "Father."
No reply.
Sienna stayed back.
She didn't belong here.
Not as a Sterling.
Not yet.
But then the old man's fingers twitched.
Weak. Feeble.
Reaching.
For her.
She stepped forward.
He didn't speak—but his trembling hand pushed something into hers.
A smooth object. Cool. Heavy.
A piece of jade?
No.
She looked down.
It was a half pendant, split cleanly through the center.
The same shape as the jade cicada her master had worn in every photo she had.
This one was stained.
With blood.
Her heart skipped.
"Where did you get this?" she whispered.
Adrian's lips moved behind the mask.
No words. Only a sound.
Then—his index finger lifted slowly.
And drew, with glacial effort, a symbol across Silas's palm.
An infinity sign.
∞
Silas's brows drew tight. "What the hell does that mean?"
Sienna knew.
It wasn't infinity.
It was double helix.
DNA.
And suddenly, everything made sense.
The gene-locks. The memory pairing. The mirrored hearts.
This wasn't about love or loyalty.
It was about design.
She opened her mouth to speak—
But Adrian Sterling's body seized.
The machines wailed.
Nurses ran in.
But it was too late.
Adrian Sterling, CEO of Sterling Pharmaceuticals, father of two and creator of many, was dead.
His eyes froze open, staring at the ceiling, and his final gesture remained burned into Silas's skin.
The inheritance war had just begun.
—
They were ushered into the ancestral study twenty minutes later.
Mahogany-paneled, filled with glass cases of extinct butterflies and old surgical instruments.
Sienna's hands still clutched the jade fragment like it might bite her.
She turned it over.
The edge was not smooth.
It was cracked.
Like it had once been broken in violence.
Silas poured a glass of something dark and didn't drink it. He stared at the fireplace like it might answer him.
The door burst open.
Pierce Sterling.
The eldest son.
First House.
He stormed in, flanked by two board attorneys and a private security agent with no insignia on his chest.
"Sienna Chen," Pierce said, voice like acid. "You are hereby accused of interfering with a dying man's will, tampering with inheritance data, and illegally administering unapproved biological agents to the CEO."
Silas stood.
"You're bluffing."
"I have footage," Pierce snapped. "Only she entered his room in the last hour. The surgical machines registered exposure to foreign antibodies."
"She was invited in," Silas replied. "The old man gave her something."
He gestured at her hand.
Pierce's gaze narrowed. "What is that?"
Sienna held it up.
"This?"
She crossed the room and dropped the blood-streaked half pendant onto the desk in front of him.
"It's a match," she said. "To the cicada my master died clutching."
Pierce looked confused.
So she clarified.
"It belonged to Dr. Minghao Chen."
"The rogue herbalist?"
Silas's voice was like thunder. "He was a Sterling Labs lead researcher. Fired. Then erased. After he refused to finalize the serum export contract your office pushed through."
Sienna added, "The same contract that funneled radioactive compounds into a shipping manifest labeled as 'medical oxygen'—from Sterling's offshore dockyards."
Pierce's face paled.
"I don't know what—"
Sienna held up the surgical scalpel she'd hidden in her coat.
Bloodstained.
Sterling make.
Serial-coded.
"Your father gave this to me," she said. "Guess whose fingerprints are on it?"
Pierce stared at the blade.
He didn't answer.
But the blood drained from his face.
And Silas stepped forward.
"No more lies."
—
That night, the Sterling board delayed the succession vote.
The Jade Pendant and the Surgical Scalpel were both entered into evidence for independent verification.
Silas, technically still heir-apparent, was placed under surveillance.
Sienna was officially banned from the east wing.
But that didn't stop her from entering the armory wing an hour later.
She scanned the pendant fragment again.
This time, she didn't just look for radiation.
She looked for memory encoding.
And found it.
Buried in the jade's internal layers was a compressed audio file.
She decrypted it.
And heard a voice she thought she'd never hear again.
"Sienna, if you find this… they've already chosen. You were never meant to win this war. But you were meant to end it. Not with poison. Not with algorithms. But with choice."
Her master's voice.
Tired.
But clear.
"Silas… is my greatest failure. And my last hope."
Then static.
Then silence.
Sienna didn't cry.
She stared at the screen.
And clenched the pendant until it cut her palm.
She knew now—
This wasn't a fight for a company.
It was a war for memory.
And she would bleed every truth from it before she stopped.