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The air smells like expensive espresso and fake lavender.

It’s the kind of mix that makes my skin crawl, but I breathe it in anyway.

I’m standing in front of Cafe La Rue, the glass-and-brass little shrine to the perfectly curated life I used to lead.

Nestled between two overpriced perfumeries, it’s still the same place where influencers would pose for hours while pretending they didn’t care about being photographed.

But now it feels like I’m stepping into a graveyard.

I push open the door, and the chime overhead rings like a fucking funeral bell. Heads turn instantly, and their eyes rake over me like vultures circling something fresh. I feel their stares like pricks along my skin—curiosity, judgment, and thinly veiled fear. They know who I am. Or who I was.

The ghost of glam past.

My heels click softly on the marble floor as I move forward, though there are no towering Louboutin stilettos and no diamonds screaming for attention today.

Just a simple black crepe dress that hugs my frame like a second skin, elegant, severe, and unyielding.

It’s sleeveless with a high neckline. No jewelry.

No distractions. The only color is the blood-red slash of lipstick on my lips, like a warning sign they’re too stupid to read.

They only mourn you when you stop being useful.

Whispers bloom like weeds around me. The same people who reposted my downfall can’t look away now as I glide past them with my chin high and back straight, every inch the woman they failed to bury. I don’t flinch. I let them have their little gasps, their wide eyes, and their pathetic whispers.

The hostess recognizes me immediately but says nothing. She just nods and gestures toward the private alcove in the back, the one I reserved under no name at all.

Fiona Graves is already waiting.

She’s exactly how I remember her from the few underground interviews we danced around before.

She’s in her early forties with a sharp jaw, short-cropped hair dyed steel gray, and an androgynous tailored suit that looks like it cost more than some of these bitches’ entire closets.

Her eyes cut through the dim lighting like blades.

“You’re late,” she says, raising one brow.

“You’re early,” I counter, sliding into the seat across from her.

The table smells faintly of disinfectant and bourbon. She already has a glass poured, neat. I ask for water, partially because my stomach is still recovering from the drugged haze of two nights ago, but mostly because I want my mind sharp for this.

“You still have a way of owning a room,” Fiona murmurs, smirking. “Even when it wants to eat you alive.”

“Let them watch,” I say, my voice flat. “I want them to remember what’s coming.”

Just then, the server approaches with careful steps and places my glass of water on the table with the kind of precision usually reserved for explosives.

His hands tremble slightly, his eyes flicking up to meet mine, looking wide, uncertain, and maybe even a little afraid.

He’s young, probably new, and definitely not trained for this kind of tension.

I catch his gaze and offer him a slow, composed smile. It’s not cruel, but not kind either. It’s just enough to let him know I see him, and that he should keep moving.

He does.

Fiona watches the entire exchange, then turns back to me, her expression unreadable.

She studies me like I’m the headline she hasn’t written yet, calculating, always a beat ahead.

“You don’t usually reach out,” she finally says.

“And never for lunch. So either you’re incredibly lonely or dangerously serious. ”

I pull the folder from my bag, the matte leather cool beneath my fingertips, and slide it across the table to her. “Both,” I answer.

Fiona flips it open without hesitation. Her eyes move quickly, scanning the copies of my mother’s hidden archive.

The trust agreements, the shell companies, the offshore transactions, the unfiled depositions from employees who mysteriously disappeared, and, of course, the personal entries from my mother’s journal that she never got to release.

As she reads, her expression shifts from curiosity to something far darker. “This isn’t just corruption,” she whispers. “This is generational rot.”

“He doesn’t just control companies, Fiona. He controls people. And when they stop being useful, he makes them disappear.”

Fiona shuts the folder carefully, then folds her fingers together like a priest about to deliver the last rites. “You’re either starting a war or writing your own obituary.”

I meet her gaze without blinking. “Why not both?”

Her smirk curves again, but there’s respect behind it now. “You know if I run this, your father’s not the only one who’ll burn. This will ignite everything. Corporate boards, political backers, international assets…”

“Good. They stood by him. They profited off him. Now, they can burn with him.”

Fiona’s words sit between us like the loaded gun it is. Then, she lifts her glass and takes a slow sip of bourbon. “I’ll publish it,” she says softly. “But once it’s out, there’s no running.”

“Good thing I’m not running anymore then.”

Her lips part, about to say something else, but she pauses as her gaze flicks over my shoulder. More eyes are watching us. The vultures are still circling. “You’ve got guts, Lyra Vane,” she says. “But guts don’t keep you alive.”

“No,” I reply, my voice calm yet sharp. “But rage does.”

We finish quickly. I leave her with the folder, a time bomb wrapped in black leather, and walk back out through the sea of whispers and sidelong stares like a queen walking through a battlefield.

Every step feels heavier, but also sharper.

The air outside is crisp and freezing now, and it bites at my skin as if the world itself knows what’s about to come.

When I arrive back at the estate, the house feels different. Silas’s men are everywhere now, quiet, watchful, and tense. The air inside still carries the faint metallic tang of blood from the night of the breach, and my heels echo through the marble as I head straight for the study.

I kick off my shoes and let my bare feet touch the white marble as I head straight for the balcony.

The cool evening air hits me the second I slide the doors open. It carries a faint hint of burning cedar from the estate grounds, but under it, there's something sharper—a kind of emptiness that settles in my chest and won’t move.

The city lights glitter below like a bed of stars that don’t give a single fuck about who lives or dies tonight. And neither do I, if I’m being honest.

I pull my phone from my pocket and stare at it for a long moment. Notifications still flood the screen—comments, reactions, and media alerts. The vultures never rest, and every ping feels like another needle beneath my skin, so I start deleting.

Instagram. Deleted.

TikTok. Deleted.

X. Deleted.

Every app, every account, every carefully curated lie I’ve lived and sold, gone.

With each deletion, the emptiness inside me grows, but it somehow feels cleaner. Like I’m peeling away layers of dead skin. Layers that were never mine to begin with.

When the last app vanishes, I stare at the blank home screen. My thumb hovers for a second before I swipe into the burner platform Noah built for me. Secure, isolated, neutral ground.

The interface is brutally simple. No filters. No hashtags. No validation machines.

Just the truth.

My heart pounds as my fingers hover over the keyboard.

The words come faster than I expect, pouring out from that hollow part of me that’s been waiting for this moment longer than I want to admit, so I type, “I’m not an influencer anymore.

I’m not your aesthetic. I’m not your fantasy.

I’m Lyra Isola Vane, daughter of the woman you forgot, and I’m here to remind you. ”

Then, I attach the photo Noah found buried in my mother’s old archive. It’s my mother in 1993 with her hair wild in the wind as she holds a protest sign that reads, “Luxury without conscience is just greed.”

She looks fierce, untamed, and free. Exactly what they tried to erase.

I hit post.

The emptiness inside me drones on, but it doesn’t hurt like before. Now, it feels like… space and room for something else to grow. Something sharp, something dangerous.

For a moment, I lean against the iron balcony railing and close my eyes. My chest rises and falls with heavy breaths as the weight of the world is still there. My father, the lawsuits, the media firestorm. But for the first time, I’m not crumbling beneath it. I’m standing on top of it.

The wind tugs at my hair as I open my eyes again and stare into the void where my father’s empire used to feel untouchable. It feels smaller now. Breakable.

A faint creak behind me pulls me from my thoughts. I don’t need to turn to know who it is. His presence settles into the room like gravity.

Silas.

He steps closer, his boots quiet against the marble, and I feel his eyes on me before I even lift my head.

When I finally turn to face him, my lips curve into a smile. Small, real, and dangerous. “Hi,” I whisper.

And in his gaze, I see it. The same fire. The same promise.

The war isn’t over.

It has just begun.