Page 66

The quiet is almost unnatural.

After everything, after the storms I unleashed, the city feels still. I sit in my new private apartment, my safehouse above the wreckage, bathed in the soft, artificial glow of wall-mounted screens.

Noah stands to my left with his arms folded, scanning security feeds like the ex-operative he is.

Zara’s behind me, pacing, her phone glued to her hand as she updates journalists and coordinates releases, and Fiona sits calmly on the leather couch with her laptop open, cross-referencing files and filtering real-time leaks as they detonate across the internet.

The headlines scroll like a goddamn Evander banner.

HEIRESS VS. EMPIRE.

VANE INDUSTRIES UNRAVELING.

DECLAN PIERCE: THE FALLEN FIXER.

A bitter laugh tries to claw its way out of my throat, but I swallow it. No point savoring this yet. It isn’t over.

The social feeds are a bonfire, millions of comments screaming in every direction. Some are rallying behind me, calling me brave, calling me a hero. But others? They still call me spoiled, vindictive, and hungry for attention.

As if I wanted any of this.

I sit forward, resting my elbows on my knees, my fingers threading into my hair. My voice is barely above a whisper when I say, “This isn’t Evandery. It’s survival.”

Noah hears me anyway. “You’re doing what none of them had the guts to do, Lyra. That’s the only thing that matters now.”

I glance toward Fiona. “Is it holding?”

She nods, her voice clinical when she says, “The evidence packages are airtight. Even if someone tries to suppress it, it has already gone viral. You triggered a cascade.”

Zara steps closer, touching my shoulder softly. “Declan’s next. They’re moving in on him now.”

The feed cuts to live footage of Declan’s condo—glass, steel, luxury, and lit up like a crime scene.

Helicopters circle overhead, their spotlights slicing through the night.

Tactical agents swarm the entrance, black-clad silhouettes flooding his high-rise fortress.

The glass door shatters inward with a deafening crash that echoes even through the muted speakers, and flashbangs explode like tiny suns.

Seconds later, they drag him out.

Declan’s in handcuffs, his head lowered, jaw tight, and hair disheveled, a man finally stripped of his carefully curated polish. Paparazzi flash bulbs strobe against his face as federal agents shove him into the back of a black SUV.

My face stays blank as my chest burns.

The betrayal isn’t new. But seeing him like this… it fucking twists something inside me.

It was the charity gala at the Waldorf years ago. I was barely twenty-one, my skin still too thin for this world. My father had just finished parading me around like a show pony to his investors. I had slipped away to breathe.

Declan had found me standing near the ballroom terrace, a glass of champagne trembling slightly in my hand. “Hey,” he said softly, stepping close. “You okay?”

I remember the warmth of his hand on my lower back, making me feel better. I remember the way his voice dipped into that protective register and the way he made it feel like I could trust him. Like he was the only one who saw through my father’s games.

“You don’t have to let them control you like this," he’d whispered.

“What choice do I have?” I asked him.

He smiled, gentle and calculated. “You have me.”

I stare at the screen as the SUV drives off with him inside.

“You never protected me,” I murmur under my breath. “You were always part of the machine.”

The sting of it hardens my resolve. My fingers tighten into fists, my nails digging into my palms.

Zara lowers her voice, glancing at me. “You okay?”

I look up at her, my voice steady now when I answer, “I will be. We’re just getting started.”

Silas pulled some strings so we’re able to get the footage from inside the interrogation room.

An hour later, we’re still sitting in front of the screen, watching him shiver.

From the goosebumps on Declan’s skin that’s visible even through the screen, I can tell it’s freezing cold.

Every inch of the room screams you’ve got nowhere left to run, asshole.

Declan sits under the harsh fluorescent light, beads of sweat rolling down his temples. His carefully gelled hair is limp now, his shirt sleeves rolled up, his tie long gone. The man who once whispered fake promises in my ear doesn’t look so polished anymore.

On the metal table in front of him, they start stacking the evidence. File after file. Flash drives, printed records, photos. His entire fucking career laid bare.

Financial records from Isola’s medical cover-up, the money trail to the shell companies Evander funneled through his consultancy, the wire transfers offshore, the encrypted emails between him, Harper, and my father. The exact dates, the amounts, the goddamn signatures. Everything.

Declan tries to sit tall at first. He tries to keep that arrogant little smirk on his face.

But with every new folder they slam down, you can see him cracking.

His foot bounces under the table, his fingers twitch, and his breathing shifts.

And when they drop the real bomb, the altered medical examiner’s report from my mother’s death, I see the fight drain out of him completely.

He fucking did it. He signed off on erasing my mother. On covering up my father’s crime.

The agents don’t need to shout. They don’t need to threaten. The reality of his own lies is already choking him.

“You’re looking at forty years, minimum,” one of the agents says flatly. “Unless you start talking.”

Declan swallows, and his jaw works like he’s chewing on the fact that he’s completely and irrevocably fucked.

And then, finally, he breaks.

“I take a deal,” he says, his voice cracking. “I’ll give you everything. Evander, Harper, the death certificate. All of it. I’ll testify.”

Coward. Fucking coward.

Silas is the one who delivers the update to me hours later, standing in my apartment with the same neutral face he always wears when the news is both expected and disgusting.

“He’s officially cooperating,” Silas says. “Full testimony. He flipped on Harper and your father.”

I don’t say a word. I don’t flinch.

I just nod.

Because this isn’t relief. This is just another piece falling exactly where I fucking planned for it to fall.

XXX

The burner phone lights up on the sleek marble table, its screen glowing like a venomous snake waiting to strike. Zara slides it toward me, her lips pressed into a tight, angry line.

“Harper,” she says, her voice clipped. “She finally crawled out of her hole.”

I don’t reach for it immediately. I let the venomous message sit there like a spoiled offering I have no intention of accepting. The light glistens as the text glows on the screen, bold, desperate, and pathetic. Walk away, Lyra. Drop the charges, or I’ll take you down with me, it says.

Attached to it is a file—footage she’s trying to sell as evidence.

Fabricated deepfakes, chopped timelines, and spliced conversations taken out of context and stitched together like some goddamn Frankenstein creation.

She’s playing the same tired game, like she actually believes this bullshit could still scare me.

“Jesus Christ,” Zara mutters under her breath, pacing behind me like a coiled spring. “She’s completely lost it.”

“No,” I say calmly, letting my fingers finally wrap around the burner, my voice like sharpened steel. “She hasn’t lost it yet. She still thinks she has a card to play.”

Harper’s panicking, and desperate people make sloppy moves. This? This is her last gasp.

“She still thinks I’m the scared girl she broke,” I whisper. “She doesn’t realize she fucking made me.”

Noah leans over and scans the phone with quick precision, his voice even but with that dangerous undercurrent he never quite hides when he says, “She routed it through three proxies. Cute. We’ll have her physical location in a few hours.”

Fiona doesn’t even look up from her laptop, already pulling up layers of Harper’s offshore shell companies and financial proxies. “We’ve got enough to bury her twice over,” she says. “You want full exposure or strategic slow bleed?”

“Both,” I answer without hesitation.

“Now you’re starting to sound like me,” Noah says with a grin.

Zara circles back around to face me. “We’re still waiting for Silas?”

I nod. “He’s tied up with the legal team. Securing everything for trial.”

Silas has been spending every minute digging his way through layers of my father’s old legal machinery—the rotten contracts, hidden clauses, forged trusts—preparing for the full-blown war that’s about to ignite in federal court. I trust him to handle that. And I trust myself to handle Harper.

I swipe through more of Harper’s threats, shaking my head at how fucking pathetic they are. Empty words from a woman whose entire world is collapsing beneath her stiletto heels.

“She’s cornered,” Zara says. “You want me to respond? I can serve her something nasty.”

“No,” I reply. “She wants me to flinch. But we don’t flinch. We bury her.”

Fiona pulls up the full network of Harper’s financials on the massive digital table, every connection lighting up like a spiderweb of rot. “Cayman accounts. Dubai laundering rings. Wire transfers disguised as consulting fees. Every dollar she thought was invisible… now visible.”

Noah adds, “Her private server’s wide open. We’ve got her conversations with Evander. Multiple documented bribes, influence peddling, and blackmail plots. She’s not just going down. She’s taking a fucking nosedive straight into hell.”

Zara sits down, tapping furiously on her tablet. “And her lawyers? Dirty as fuck. I’ve got evidence they were fabricating legal documents and paying off witnesses to keep Harper’s name clean.”

“Good,” I say, my voice low. “Then we pull the trigger.”

Fiona glances over. “Are you sure you’re ready? Once this goes out, it’s nuclear. There’ll be no coming back.”

I meet her eyes confidently. “Press the goddamn button.”

Fiona’s fingers fly across the keys. “Sending full evidence package to the Justice Department, federal prosecutors, and every major journalist we’ve vetted. Anonymous leaks hit social feeds in T-minus thirty seconds.”

We sit in anticipation as the digital clock ticks down. And then, the blast radius detonates.

Screens light up across the table, and live news feeds erupt with breaking headlines. Every channel, every journalist, every influencer. Harper’s name is now tattooed across every glowing screen for the world to feast on.

I watch the destruction play out like a goddamn symphony.

Just then, the footage cuts to a live broadcast outside her private resort villa. A fortress of white marble and glass now crawling with federal agents and tactical units. Helicopters hover above like vultures waiting for a corpse.

Within moments, Harper’s voice pierces through the feed, shrill, broken, and hysterical.

She paces the balcony like a caged animal, her mascara running in jagged streaks down her face.

She’s screaming into her phone like it might still save her.

“YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND! I HAVE POWER! I STILL HAVE POWER! ”

No, bitch. You don’t.

Federal agents breach the villa with brutal efficiency—doors smashed open, guns drawn.

They swarm her like sharks tasting blood, and within seconds, Harper’s face slams into the marble, her arms wrenched behind her back.

Cuffs click shut as she thrashes, screaming obscenities that bleed into incoherent sobs.

The charges spill from the lead agent’s mouth: “Harper Kingston, you are under arrest for fraud, money laundering, witness intimidation, and obstruction of justice.”

Zara lets out a long, satisfied exhale beside me. “Fucking finally.”

I watch Harper’s face—ravaged, hollow, and broken—one last time on the screen. The mask she wore so well for so long finally shattered to dust.

My lips curve into a small, dangerous smile. “Checkmate.”

That night, I walk alone through the estate garden, the cool air brushing against my skin like a silent reminder that nothing can ever return to what it once was.

The moonlight casts long, haunting shadows across the manicured hedges and marble statues, monuments to a past that tried to break me.

I inhale deeply, my fingers brushing against the delicate necklace Silas had given me, feeling its weight against my throat.

Despite the Evanderies, despite the collapses of Harper and Declan, there’s still a hollow place inside me—not empty but scarred.

The damage they inflicted is permanent. But I’m not broken. Not anymore.