"You think you're untouchable, don't you?"
Logan's words clung to Aria long after he vanished into the ballroom. The click of her heels echoed through the now-empty marble foyer of the Vance estate, but her mind was still out on that balcony, replaying his voice like a warning.
Control is an illusion.
She tossed her clutch onto the foyer table, kicked off her heels, and stood barefoot in the silence, her pulse still uneven.
Damian was already waiting by the staircase.
"You should've left with security," he said softly, his usual cocky edge nowhere in sight. "It's late."
"You think I'm scared of Logan?" Aria muttered, walking past him toward the liquor cabinet.
"I think you should be," Damian said, following her. "Or at least… careful. That look in his eyes tonight? That wasn't bluff. That was something else."
She poured a glass of whiskey, offering him one. He shook his head.
"I'm used to poison by now," Aria said wryly, sipping. "This one burns less."
He watched her in silence. There was something unreadable in his expression. Concern? Guilt? She couldn't place it.
"I'm serious, Aria," he said finally. "You've got enemies on every side, but the ones you should worry about are the ones smiling at you."
She turned to him. "You think I don't know that already?"
Damian's jaw clenched. "Yeah, I think you do. But that doesn't mean you should walk through fire just to prove it."
She stared at him.
"Why do you care so much?"
For a heartbeat, he didn't answer. Then he stepped closer, gaze holding hers.
"Because somewhere along the line, it stopped being about the job."
The silence between them shifted, tense and electric. Aria looked away first.
"You should go," she said quietly. "I need time to think."
He nodded, stepping back, but his eyes lingered on her face a second longer. "Lock your doors tonight."
And then he left.
----
By the time the sound of Damian's car faded beyond the estate walls, Aria had already moved into her study. The fireplace cast golden shadows across the room as she stood there, sipping her drink, finally letting herself breathe.
Then came the knock.
Not at the front door. Her office door.
A frown creased her brows as she crossed the room and opened it. No one was there. But something slid under the door.
A folded sheet of paper. Heavy, cream-colored. Familiar.
She bent, picked it up, and opened it with practiced caution.
A single line stared back at her in that same typewritten font as the last:
"This house isn't yours to defend. It's mine to reclaim."
Before the chill could fully settle over her spine, her phone buzzed on the desk. It was Julie.
"Julie?" Aria answered, her voice sharper than intended.
"Sorry to bother you this late," Julie said, sounding winded. "But there was something in my inbox. Scheduled to send at midnight. From… from your father's old internal network. I thought it was spam but—Aria, it's a note. Addressed to you."
Aria sat down slowly. "What does it say?"
"I don't know. I didn't open it—just forwarded it to your encrypted line. But the subject line said, 'Reclaim the Throne.'"
Her grip on the phone tightened. "Thanks, Julie. Lock down that server access. I'll look into it."
She ended the call and turned back to her laptop, opening the encrypted inbox.
And there it was. The subject line: "Reclaim the Throne."
No body. No sender. Just an attachment.
She didn't open it.
Not yet.
----
Damian's boots echoed across the cracked concrete rooftop of an old half-renovated building overlooking the financial district. The place had been gutted years ago, its walls skeletal and cold, but tonight it served a purpose. Far below, the city buzzed with life—completely unaware of the storm about to erupt above it.
"You're late," a voice drawled from the shadows near the edge.
Damian didn't flinch. "I'm early. You gave me fifteen. I'm here in ten."
A man stepped out from the dark, the brim of his coat pulled high, his gloved hands in his pockets. His face was only partially visible, but his presence was unmistakable—sharp, commanding, and dangerous.
"She's beginning to suspect everyone," Damian said, tone clipped. "Even me."
"She should," the man replied coolly. "Trust is a liability. Let her doubt. It makes her predictable."
Damian's jaw clenched. "That's not what we discussed. You said I was to observe, steer things away from danger. Not push her off a cliff."
The man's eyes glinted under the faint rooftop light. "You were planted to keep her focused on the wrong enemy. And you've done well." He paused. "But Aria Vance is more dangerous than we gave her credit for. She's rewriting the script."
Damian folded his arms. "You're not here to protect her anymore, are you?"
The man chuckled, low and humorless. "I never was."
A beat passed in silence, the wind howling through the open beams.
"Then what are you here for?" Damian asked quietly, though he already knew.
The man stepped forward until his boots were nearly touching Damian's. "Revenge. The kind that doesn't leave room for mercy."
Damian's expression darkened. "She's not her father."
"But she carries his sins." The man's voice was laced with venom now. "And I'll make her choke on every one of them."
Damian's hands balled into fists. "You said this would be about control. About leverage."
"It still is," the man said, calm as ever. "Control through fear. Through truth. She destroyed my family—whether she knows it or not. And now? I'm going to dismantle hers. Piece by piece. Starting with her trust in you."
"You touch her," Damian growled, "and I swear—"
"You'll what?" the man snapped. "Switch sides? You already did once. Don't forget who gave you your second chance."
A heavy silence fell between them.
Then the man smiled, almost gently. "Relax. I don't intend to kill her. Just... ruin her. Thoroughly. Beautifully. And when she's on her knees, begging for answers, I'll tell her the truth. About me. About her father. About why everything she's built was always doomed to fall."
Damian didn't respond. He couldn't. Because deep down, part of him had always feared this would be the endgame.
----
Elsewhere, deep in an old records room at Vance Enterprises HQ...
The hum of fluorescent lights flickered overhead, casting pale, uneven light across rows of dusty metal cabinets. The air was dry, stale with age and the scent of long-forgotten paper. Down here, in the lowest sub-level of the building, even the security feeds were outdated—low resolution, grainy, barely monitored.
A maintenance worker pushed a cart stacked with old archive boxes through the narrow aisles, the wheels squeaking softly over the linoleum floor. His orange jumpsuit bore the company logo, his face obscured beneath the shadow of a cap and a surgical mask. Standard health compliance, nothing unusual.
But he wasn't maintenance. Not really.
As soon as he reached the far end of the aisle—out of range of the sole flickering camera—he stopped. Glancing over his shoulder, he pulled out a keycard and slid it into the cabinet marked Vance Legal: 1991–1995. The green light blinked once, then the lock clicked open with a mechanical sigh.
He shed the jumpsuit in one fluid motion, revealing a black turtleneck and slim tactical vest beneath. The worker's cap was replaced with a Vance Enterprises staff badge clipped neatly to his collar. He moved with silent efficiency, no wasted gestures, like a man who had done this sort of thing many times before.
His gloved fingers moved quickly through the files—searching, skimming—until he paused at a slim manila folder. Unlike the others, this one was newer. The edges weren't frayed, the paper slightly glossier. On the front, in bold ink, was Mathew Vance, penned in the same unmistakable signature Aria had grown up memorizing.
Inside the folder was a sealed envelope, cream-colored and heavier than it looked. He turned it over.
Whitmore – Offshore Transactions. Confidential.
He exhaled slowly, a faint smirk tugging at his lips.
Jackpot.
Sliding the envelope into his inner coat pocket, he closed the cabinet, relocked it, and then reached down to pick up a small device tucked inside the tool bin on his cart. It looked like a wrench at a glance—but in his hands, it transformed into a micro-jammer.
He flipped a tiny switch. For the next fifteen minutes, every motion detector and camera feed covering this section would loop harmless footage.
He didn't need that long.
Stepping back, he gave the cabinet one last look, as if mentally recording its position, then murmured under his breath, low and intimate—like a promise, or a curse.
"Soon, sweetheart... you'll wish your father stayed buried."
The silence around him deepened, thick with secrets.
Then he turned and disappeared into the shadows, leaving only the faint scent of printer toner and dust in his wake.
----
And in a quiet café across town...
Rain tapped softly against the fogged-up windows of the old café on Willow Street. It was the kind of place that had forgotten time—dim lighting, chipped mugs, and the smell of burnt coffee soaked into the walls. The late hour meant only a few stragglers remained—an elderly couple whispering by the window, a barista half-asleep behind the counter, and one man seated at a corner table, hunched low beneath a battered coat.
Russell Pierce.
His hands trembled slightly as he stirred a cup of lukewarm tea, though he hadn't taken a single sip. The spoon clinked against the ceramic in an uneven rhythm, echoing his heartbeat. His eyes kept darting to the door... then to the window... then back to his phone, which sat silent beside the cup.
Still nothing from Aria.
Still nothing from Damian.
He cursed under his breath and rubbed his temples, fighting the headache clawing behind his eyes. The pressure of keeping secrets—real, dangerous secrets—was beginning to break him.
He reached for his phone again, thumb hovering over Aria's contact, but he didn't press it. Not yet. Not until he was sure. Not until he had something solid.
But he wasn't sure of anything anymore.
With a deep, shaky breath, Russell opened the voice recorder app on his phone. His finger hesitated a second, then tapped "record."
"If I disappear..." he began, his voice low and hoarse, barely audible over the faint jazz playing overhead. "Check the sealed files in Room 8B of the legal archives. The ones behind the false panel. It's all in there—the deals, the offshore accounts, the Whitmore cover-up... all of it. I was part of it. We all were."
He paused, swallowing hard, glancing around the café. No one was watching. But he lowered his voice further anyway.
"She wasn't. Aria. She didn't know. Her father... he kept her away from that side of the business. Maybe he thought he was protecting her. Maybe he thought she'd never find out. But now? It's going to destroy her."
His voice cracked, emotion bleeding through. Regret. Shame. And fear.
"She deserves to know—before he tears her apart. Before it's too late."
He stopped the recording and sat still for a moment, the phone heavy in his hand. Then, with a few practiced taps, he encrypted the file and uploaded it to a private cloud storage—one that was connected to only one failsafe contact.
Aria Vance.
A security protocol he'd set up months ago, back when guilt started gnawing at him. He never thought he'd have to use it.
The upload bar reached 100%, and he locked the phone.
Outside, a pair of headlights briefly lit up the café window. Russell flinched.
He waited.
The car moved on.
Still, the sense of dread didn't leave him.
He leaned back in his chair, eyes flicking to the exit, and whispered to himself, "Come on, Aria. Find it before they find me."
Then he reached into his coat, pulled out a folded napkin, and scribbled a final note with shaking fingers:
If you're reading this, I'm already gone.
He folded it twice, tucked it under his teacup, and left enough cash on the table to avoid questions.
Then he stood, pulled his collar up against the rain, and walked out into the night—one man alone with his guilt, and the ghosts of secrets too big to stay buried.