Page 54

There’s something unholy about how quiet the Vane Estate gets after midnight. It’s the kind of stillness that feels predatory, like the house is listening and waiting to punish someone for breathing too loudly.

I move through the halls with my usual blend of charm and felony-grade stealth, dressed in all black and looking like the kind of guy you hope doesn’t notice you in a dark alley. Except here, I’m the one doing the noticing. And I’ve noticed a whole lot of bullshit in the last twelve hours.

The estate’s staff is slim tonight. Too slim. Just a few junior guards stationed at the gate. Most of the private security detail was conveniently rotated out after Evander went off-grid. There are no new orders, no check-ins. It’s like someone hit pause on the whole damn house.

But the system’s still running, and the cameras are active. Logs are updating, and the sensors are alive, which tells me one thing. The ghost king may be hiding, but his puppets are still dancing.

The main server room’s off-limits, but the secondary security hub—quiet and tucked behind the eastern corridor—is where the good secrets are kept. Less oversight and fewer questions. The kind of place Evander never advertised but always relied on.

I make my way past a sleepy-looking staffer who jumps when he sees me.

“Maintenance,” I say, flashing a fake ID with the Vane estate’s logo and a very convincing barcode.

He squints at it. “I didn’t see anything scheduled.”

I give him a slow, deadpan look. “That’s the point of a security test.”

He swallows hard and steps aside. “Right, yeah. Sorry.”

Good man.

I slide through the door like a shadow, keying in the stolen code I memorized off a clipboard left carelessly near the south stairwell. Sloppy. These people still think luxury equals immunity.

Inside, the room breathes cold, and servers whirr in quiet unity. The lights are dim and sterile blue, casting everything in the kind of glow that makes you think of morgues and confessionals. Cables snake across the floor like arteries.

One rack is louder than the others. That’s the one I want.

I plug in the drive. It boots instantly, something Noah and I pre-loaded with a custom backdoor. It’s deep dive architecture, built to tear through encryption like tissue.

I bypass the public files and dive straight into the archives.

What I find isn’t just unsettling, it’s surgical.

Physically, Evander’s been gone for weeks, but his fingerprints are everywhere—surveillance logs updating every hour, backups uploading to offsite servers, and face recognition triggers labeled with specific threat levels.

One face has a Level 1 tag. Lyra.

I sit back for a second, staring at the designation. He has her flagged. His own daughter. Any entry or exit she makes is logged, reviewed, time-stamped, and categorized under threat tier.

It’s like a fucking prison, just with better wallpaper.

“Even when he disappears,” I mutter, my jaw tight, “he makes sure the eyes stay open.”

I keep digging.

Behind five layers of dummy directories, I hit a firewall labeled LEGAL, encrypted and timestamped with his signature key.

The encryption is beautiful. Elegant and dangerous.

I breach it anyway.

Inside, I find archived documents, contracts, and NDAs. I also find a couple of old redacted personnel files on ex-Vane operatives. Then, I hit the jackpot.

Trust Agreement: Lyra Vane Disbursement Clause

My stomach turns. I read it once. Then, I read it again.

The clause is precise and lethal. Every asset, estate holdings, stocks, offshore accounts, the goddamn foundation, held in trust until one condition is met: She must sign over the voting rights of all assets to a designated party.

Who the fuck does that?

Evander, apparently.

And the executor, the one who’s the designated party, is her father. Still pulling the strings from wherever he’s holed up.

My jaw locks, and my vision tunnels. I feel the heat creep up my neck, but it’s not anger, not even rage. This is something harsher and much deeper. It’s the kind of fury you get when you realize someone tried to write the ending to your story while you weren’t looking.

“He’s not protecting her,” I say out loud. “He’s owning her.”

This isn’t about legacy. It’s not about wealth or control. It’s about possession and domination. A final, inescapable leash. He’s turned her inheritance into a gilded cage and then wrapped the key in legalese.

I pace, my hands on my hips, trying to hold it in, but I can feel it building. The violent need to destroy everything that comes in her way. To shield her from the poison that man has laced through every part of her life.

I encrypt the file again and re-layer it with two-factor deadman’s switches. Then, I copy it.

Noah needs to see this. We’ll need space to dissect this because this isn’t just a breach. This is premeditated control and psychological warfare wrapped in legal contracts.

And I’m done playing fucking nice.

The door hisses behind me, the sound deceptively soft for what feels like a vault sealing shut.

I’ve just breached the system and exposed the venom wrapped in legacy and paperwork.

Evander’s legal chokehold on Lyra is now logged, saved, and copied.

I should be walking out of here with Evander resting on my shoulders.

But instead, I freeze.

Something’s off. It’s too quiet.

And not the kind of late-night hush a house this size naturally sinks into.

There’s a sound, a creak. It’s barely audible, but I’ve lived long enough, hunted and been hunted long enough, to know the difference between a natural groan in the floor and a human weight trying too hard to be nothing.

I pivot slowly, my heart rate slowing as my senses sharpen.

Almost like a whisper, there’s a faint scrape of fabric against the wall. A soft, almost respectful exhale. I move on instinct.

The moment I spin, he’s already lunging out of the shadows. A man in matte-black tactical gear, completely unmarked. No insignia, no badge, no face visible under the balaclava. But his body language—controlled, trained, and lethal—says enough.

A silencer-equipped pistol gleams in his grip as he fires.

The shot is a whisper “ thpp!” and it punches into the wall inches from my head. No time to think. My hand’s already down at my boot, my fingers closing around the hilt of the blade I’ve carried since Berlin.

I drop low, spinning beneath his arm as he brings the gun up for another shot, and drive the blade hard into the underside of his wrist. The steel sinks into flesh and tendon with a muffled thump , and he grunts a raw animalistic sound as the gun clatters from his hand.

Before he can switch tactics, he slams his other fist into my ribs. The air leaves my lungs in a sharp grunt, but I twist through the pain, coming around with an elbow to his throat. He chokes, staggers, and tries to step back, but I’m inside his range now.

This is my kill box.

I slam him against the server tower, the impact rattling the metal casing and making the fans inside whine louder. He claws for balance and tries to knee me, but I’m faster. I bring my blade up and bury it in his gut with brutal force.

His body jerks.

Blood blooms instantly, soaking into his vest and splattering across the side of the rack in a dark, hot arc. He growls, rage mixed with shock, and swings at my head, wild and instinctual. I duck, twisting the knife, and drive it upward under his ribs.

The tip bites into the muscle of his heart. I know that shudder—full-body, final, and electric. He spasms once, his hands slapping at my shoulders in a death twitch, then collapses with a gargling moan.

I let him drop.

He hits the floor hard, dead weight and dying whimpers, followed by the slow, wet sound of blood pooling. The spray across the server tower runs in rivulets down the steel, seeping into the vents. Somewhere inside, something sparks and fizzles.

I’m breathing hard. Blood slicks the blade in my hand, and my ribs throb where he landed the punch, but it’s nothing I haven’t bled through before.

I crouch and rifle through his pockets. His phone is a burner with a standard layout. No lock screen or ID. But there’s one message open, and it says, “Retrieve the file. Terminate if intercepted.”

A shiver crawls over me. Terminate. If intercepted.

He wasn’t here to secure anything. He was here to kill me because Evander knew I’d get in the way.

I open the metadata logs and run a trace through the diagnostic backdoor.

The sender’s number routes through a satellite tower registered under a shell corporation I’ve seen before. One buried deep in a network of offshore holdings. A trust.

Evander’s.

Even in hiding, he’s still watching, still deploying, still playing God from his gilded bunker.

I look down at the corpse. This wasn’t a warning. This was an execution order.

He expected me to come for the truth, and he planned for me to die before I got out with it.

And if he’s watching me, then he’s watching her.

Lyra.

Fuck.

If he’s sending ghosts for me, how many has he already sent for her? Who’s lurking outside her bedroom door? Who’s waiting for the right moment to get rid of the last person who can ruin him?

I stand up fast, grab the drive, and wipe my blade clean on the dead man’s sleeve. Blood smears across the fabric in wide, brutal streaks.

No time to linger.

I need to move. I need to get to Noah. I need a plan.

But more than that, I need to make sure she’s still breathing.

Because I’ve seen what Evander’s capable of.

And I will not let Lyra become another name in his silent fucking ledger.