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Her mouth opened?—
And then she was gone.
Falling.
24
ELIAS
The truth sliced through me. Jessa Lane wasShadyLady.
Her dark web chats, the “high-risk games” planned for the church lot off East Bay, lined up too perfectly with something Vivi might do—but I didn’t yet know what she and Jessa had gotten into tonight.
My spiders had cracked the encryption, tying Jessa’s burner app toShadyLady’s posts, confirming she was no mere friend but a player in this chaos. I needed to warn Vivi before Jessa’s betrayal dragged her down.
I leaned back, screens casting a cold glow across my suite. Vivi’s absence was a wound. I longed to hold her, protect her from this, but she was out there, running, and I was here, piecing together a trap closing around her.
How to tell her? Vivi trusted Jessa, relied on her chaos to quiet her demons. This would break her. I needed ironclad proof and a way to soften the blow. A private confrontation, just us, where I’d show her the data and make her see.
My fingers hovered over the keyboard, ready to dig deeper, when the door swung open, Atlas’s heavy footsteps breaking the silence.
His broad frame loomed, dark eyes brooding. “Cops called,” he said, voice clipped. “They’ve got Vivi.”
Panic clawed my throat. “What?” I stood, chair scraping, heart pounding. “What happened?”
“Downtown, in custody.” Atlas’s calm clashed with my storm. “No details, just … a dead girl. Somebody named Jessa.”
The world spun. Jessa. Dead. Vivi arrested. Images flashed—Vivi’s rooftop grin, Jessa’s coded chats. Her stunts had gone too far, and now Jessa was gone, Vivi caught in the fallout.
“What else?” I demanded, voice shaking. “What did they say?”
“Nothing more,” Atlas said, frustration in his eyes. “It’s bad, Elias. About to hit the news.”
I nodded, mind racing, panic and rage colliding. Vivi’s face burned in my memory—her eyes red, that flicker of hope I’d sworn to protect. I had to save her, but first, I needed answers.
As I turned to shut down my computer, my screen flared, and I froze.
ShadyLadywas active. Posting images now.
I clicked, breath catching.
The first photo loaded, and my blood iced: a top down angle of Vivi’s red curls on a platform, reaching for Jessa’s shocked face, her body falling. Vivi’s face was hidden, but I knew her—her frame, her desperate tension. Jessa’s eyes screamed terror, moments before her death.
I stood stock still, pulse hammering.
Someone had captured that instant, an angle no bystander could’ve caught. Drone? Hidden camera?
More images loaded: Vivi’s silhouette against the skyline, Jessa taking a running start. A broken doll on the pavement.
ShadyLadywas taunting, but Jessa was dead—her account shouldn’t be active.
Then it hit me: code injections, subtle, masking an outsider’s control. The account was hijacked, and only one force had this reach: Department 77.
25
VIVIENNE
The concrete was cold beneath my thighs. Not cold like winter. Cold like consequence. Like the echo of something once full, now hollowed out.