Sam didn't sleep.
She tried. She really did.
She stared at the ceiling long enough to memorize its cracks. She counted breaths, then regrets. But her thoughts kept circling back like wolves—hungry, persistent, impossible to ignore.
Lilly lied.
And worse—someone texted her. Someone who knew Sam. Knew enough to say "eliminate." The word itself haunted her. Like she was a problem. A threat. A checkmate waiting to happen.
So, Sam did what any heartbroken heiress with hacker-level clearance and insomnia would do.
She dug.
Her fingers flew across the keys in the dim light of her bedroom, pulling firewall after firewall apart like silk thread. A security breach here. A ghost protocol there. She followed the digital crumbs like Hansel in a hurricane.
And what she found?
Athena.
Her father's most trusted advisor. Cold, calculating, always at the edge of the picture. The kind of woman who never blinked too long and always knew just how much to smile.
Sam stared at the message logs, the surveillance pings.
Lilly wasn't just being watched.
She was being controlled.
By her own father's empire.
Sam's stomach twisted. "You son of a—"
And that's when she heard it.
The sound of glass breaking.
Downstairs.
Meanwhile…
Lilly sat in a borrowed car, two blocks away. Rain tapping on the windshield like a metronome to her guilt.
She had told herself she wouldn't go back. Not tonight. Maybe not ever.
But something felt off.
Her gut—trained and sharpened by years in the field—screamed it.
And when the security feed blinked out on her secondary monitor?
She didn't wait. Didn't think. Just drove.
Back at the Lowell estate…
Sam moved fast.
No screaming. No panicking. She grabbed the stun gun from her nightstand, a gift from Lilly weeks ago—back when she thought protection was just a fancy word for foreplay.
Footsteps echoed from the hall. Not her staff.
Not familiar.
She ducked into the shadows near the bookshelf. Her heart was racing, but her hands? Steady. Just like her mother taught her.
The door creaked open—
And Sam lunged.
The stun gun connected. A man grunted, stumbled—but didn't go down.
He was bigger than she expected. Masked. Gloved. Armed.
Sam screamed.
He raised his hand, gun flashing—
And then Lilly was there.
Like she'd been summoned by the scream. Like a storm with teeth.
Bang.
The intruder dropped. One shot. Neck. Clean.
Sam froze.
Lilly turned to her, breath ragged, blood on her sleeve, gun still raised.
Their eyes met. Time cracked.
And all Sam could say was—
"You came back."
Lilly's voice was soft. Shaken. "You thought I wouldn't?"
"I didn't know what to think."
They stared at each other across the crime scene. A body cooling between them. Blood on the carpet. Regret thick in the air.
Lilly took a shaky step forward.
Sam didn't move.
Then another.
Sam's lip trembled. "I found out. About Athena. About the message."
Lilly's heart dropped. "Sam—"
"I was a target."
"No. Not to me. Never to me."
And with that?
Sam broke. Right there in her own hallway.
Into Lilly's arms. Into the very arms that lied to her. That also saved her.
Again.