Page 34

Lyra’s sitting on the bed, hunched over slightly like she’s trying to hold herself together but can’t.

She looks so small, so fragile, and it makes my chest tighten.

This isn’t the woman who walks into a room with fire and grace.

This is a woman who’s been broken, exposed, and torn apart, and I want to fix it. I want to make everything right again.

But for now, the only thing I can do is hold her. So I do.

I pull her into my arms, and the moment our bodies connect, I can feel the shudder of relief that ripples through her. She’s crying, her face buried against my chest, and I can’t do anything but let her cry. Let her feel it.

I can’t even speak. Not yet. The rage inside me is too loud. Too hot. The thing that aches the most isn’t just her pain. It’s knowing that whoever did this to her is out there, and they think they’ve won. But they haven’t. Not yet.

“Silas…” She whispers my name like it’s a lifeline. Her voice is raw, barely above a whisper. “Make it stop. Please.”

The desperation in her voice twists something deep inside me. God help anyone who’s behind this. I will burn them to the ground.

But for now, I just hold her, feeling the exhaustion seep through her like it’s taking all her energy. Slowly, her sobs slow, her breathing evens out, and after what feels like forever, she falls asleep in my arms. But the anger inside me doesn’t subside. If anything, it only grows.

Carefully, I lay her down on the bed and cover her with the blanket. I need to be out of here. I need to find the bastard who did this.

I walk out of the room, my mind already working through the next steps.

The surveillance room is just down the hall.

It’s my territory. My place to keep track of everything, to know everything, to watch over everything.

And right now? I need to find out who’s responsible for violating her privacy, her body, her life.

I step into the dark room, and the screens light up as soon as I flick the switch. The glow is harsh, the kind that feels like it’s burning into my soul. But I don’t care. This is where I work. This is where I can focus.

The first feed I pull up is from the gala. I go through the footage from the night. It’s the usual—people mingling, smiling, and posing for pictures. The world of the wealthy and beautiful. But I’m not interested in that. I’m not here to look at their faces.

I’m here for the shadows.

I know that somewhere, hidden in the footage, I’ll find the key. There must be a moment, one moment, where someone stepped too far. One slip-up where the camera caught something they didn’t want anyone to see.

It takes me a few minutes to find it. The feed comes up blurry at first because of people walking by and too many bodies in the frame. But then, there’s a movement. A brief flash. A shadow in the hallway.

I rewind the footage, and my fingers hover over the keys as I zoom in.

Someone’s standing there in the background. They’re not where they should be, and the camera’s angle is off, shaky, but it’s enough to make me freeze.

This isn’t random. It’s not some accident. Someone planted this footage. They knew exactly what they were doing.

I move faster, rewinding, zooming, and trying to piece it together. And then I catch him—the person in the background. It’s just a flash, but it’s enough.

I’ve seen that posture before. I’ve seen that walk. The man’s face is mostly obscured, but I know who it is. My gut twists with recognition.

Declan Pierce.

Of course it’s him. The last person I ever thought would be involved in something like this. The charming, harmless heir to a pile of meaningless money. The fucking bastard who thinks he can get away with everything because of who his family is.

The name hits me like a punch to the gut.

I don’t need to think twice about it. He’s the one behind this.

He’s the one who set everything in motion.

I’ve seen the way he looked at her, the way he moved around her.

Always just a little too close, and always a little too interested. I should have fucking known.

I hit a few keys, pulling up a detailed search of Declan’s personal information.

His family’s wealth, his connections, his entire fucking life.

I pull up everything, including business dealings, social accounts, and background checks.

This is my world now. The digital shadows, where everyone hides their secrets.

Well, I’m going to drag them all into the light.

But something about this doesn’t sit right with me. Declan’s the obvious culprit, but there’s a bigger fish to fry here. I don’t know what it is yet, and I need to dig deeper. I need to find out what’s really driving him.

I can feel my pulse quicken as I open more files. And then I see an encrypted document, one I wasn’t expecting. My hands move faster, my focus sharper as I break through the layers of encryption. The file opens, and my gut twists again.

It’s a series of messages, chat logs between Declan and Harper Westwood. Archived. Hidden. The two of them have been in this together. This isn’t just a one-off betrayal. This is a fucking conspiracy.

The messages are vague at first, but they’re full of implication. There’s talk about her, about Lyra, about controlling the narrative, and making her “less valuable.”

I feel my chest tighten as I read further. They’ve been working together to destabilize her. To mangle her.

I should’ve fucking checked their archived and spam messages before as well. I’m angry at myself for not protecting her. For being too distracted.

But they’re not finished yet. No. This is just the beginning.

I slam my fist on the desk, rage coursing through my veins. I can feel the walls closing in. I know what I have to do. I know how I have to play this.

But I need more. I need to know everything about Declan. Everything about his connections. I need to go deeper.

I pick up my phone and dial.

“Noah,” I say when he picks up. His voice is gruff, but there’s familiarity there, a history of trust. He knows exactly what I need.

“I need you to pull everything you can on Declan Pierce. I need to know every fucking detail about his life, his family, and his contacts. Everything. And I need it now.”

There’s a pause on the other end. Then, Noah’s voice comes through, calm and steady. “You got it, Silas. You want me to dig deep?”

“Do it,” I say. “Leave no stone unturned. Get me everything. I’ll be ready for whatever’s next.”

“I’m on it.”

I hang up, my mind already working and plotting my next move. I won’t stop until I’ve destroyed everyone involved in this. I’ll burn everything down to the ground if that’s what it takes.

But first, I need to wait for Noah. I need to know everything about Declan Pierce, and when I do, I’ll take him down.

I stare at the screens, my heart still pounding with the residual heat of that call with Noah. He’s mobilizing. Good. But I can’t sit still. Not while Lyra’s image is still being dragged through the digital dirt.

She’s asleep upstairs, finally, curled up like she’s trying to disappear into the mattress.

Her phone stays next to me on the desk like a cursed relic.

I’ve silenced the notifications, but the messages keep coming, DMs, comments, and tags.

The kind of noise meant to gut a person’s soul pixel by pixel.

I crack my knuckles. Time to go dark-ops on these motherfuckers.

One perk of those long-ass nights in military recon? They taught me how to do more than just kill in the field. A cybersecurity course they forced on us before our deployment in Djibouti taught me how to bypass firewalls, trace IPs, and even write basic worms if I need them.

I boot up my old laptop. It’s ancient-looking but armored to the teeth. There’s no tracking software and no Bluetooth. It’s a relic of my paranoia, and tonight, it earns its keep.

I connect to the hardline, fire up Kali Linux, and start sifting through repost chains. There’s a pattern, like breadcrumbs left by a cocky bastard who thinks he’s smarter than the rest.

First domain is a .ru registry, buried under ten redirectors and a fake art portfolio. I smile bitterly. “Cute.”

I isolate the backend server, inject a logic bomb, and watch the system stutter, then flatline. Site gone. One down.

I log every admin account, scrape the emails, and cross-reference with my side database. Ten of them. All with American VPN pings. Two trace back to a university in Florida. Idiots using campus Wi-Fi to jack off to stolen sex tapes.

I spoof a cease-and-desist letter from a federal agent and send it to the university IT department with attachments. The kind that can end a scholarship and a future.

“Congratulations,” I mutter. “Your free ride’s over.”

The next server’s worse as it’s part of a larger content farm. It’s not porn-focused but full of gossip, headlines, and false news with clickbait banners like “SEE THE SCANDAL THAT brOKE THE INTERNET” and “EXCLUSIVE: Billionaire Heiress Caught on Camera.”

I pull their WHOIS data and locate the owner. It belongs to a scumbag named Vincent Vega. It’s his real name, surprisingly. He works out of a rented office in Scottsdale. I dig into his profile and find six prior lawsuits for defamation. All settled. But never learned.

I call the number listed under his LLC, and he answers with a bored, “Yeah?”

“You don’t know me,” I say, my voice low and level, “but you’ll remember this. Take the video down. All of it. Every post. Every trace. Or your kid’s private school gets an anonymous tip about daddy’s second business. The one you keep off your taxes.”

“You threatening me, man?”

“No. Just giving you a chance to avoid what comes next,” I say straight to the point.

Click. I hang up.

Five minutes later, the site goes dark.

I sit back, adrenaline buzzing in my teeth. The sound of Lyra shifting upstairs on the camera makes my spine lock for a second, like I’ve been caught. But it’s just her, restless, even in sleep.

I slide her phone closer and open her Instagram again. Her latest post of her in the champagne dress and laughing at the gala has a million views. But the comments are war.

“Send full vid. 500 cash.”

“Slut.”

“Marry me, please, goddess.”

“Damn, Silas’s got taste.”

That one makes me pause. It’s the only one that doesn’t make me want to break someone’s rib. But even then, they don’t get to talk about her. Not like that.

I take a screenshot of the worst offenders. Names, usernames, and IPs where I can get them. One guy even posted it to a Telegram group with 30,000 followers.

So I launch a script that reports the group, floods their server with bogus DMCA complaints, and reroutes their admin panel to a fake login page. I’m not just erasing evidence. I’m making them fear the shadows they post in.

I work for another three hours and strip everything I can find. I bury data with false flags, redirect suspicious links to malware, and scramble metadata.

They wanted to destroy her. They wanted to break her.

But they don’t know one thing.

I’ve already lost one Vane woman. I won’t lose another.