Page 69

One year has passed, and I’ve realized that power tastes different when you’ve bled for it.

This tower—once my father’s monument to control—doesn’t haunt me anymore. It obeys me now. The name Vane was stripped from its face, torn down along with his empire. In its place, bold and unapologetic, gleams the new name: The Isola Center.

The government carved his legacy apart piece by piece—tax evasion, fraud, racketeering. What wasn’t seized was repurposed, and what wasn’t repurposed was destroyed. But from that wreckage, I built something far more dangerous: Isola Enterprises.

It isn’t just a nonprofit anymore. It's a goddamn engine. Ruthless, surgical, and global. The very empire my father feared someone would one day build against him, only he never imagined it would be me.

Every week, survivors walk through my doors. People who were bribed, threatened, coerced, or buried. Every month, another titan of corruption falls beneath the evidence we deliver. The media calls it a reckoning. The world calls it terrifying.

I call it balance.

With Declan and Harper gone, the letters from my stalker stopped arriving too.

It turned out the whole thing had been an elaborate scheme designed to frighten me, a cruel manipulation orchestrated behind my back.

My father had no idea what they were doing.

If he had, he never would’ve hired Silas.

And yet, in a strange twist of fate, I’m grateful for it all—the letters, the fear, even my father’s absence.

Because without any of it, I never would’ve met Silas.

Ironically, I owe it all to those backstabbing weasels. They tried to break me, but instead, they led me straight to the one person who would help me heal.

Zara enters, tablet in hand, her heels clicking against the marble. “Your ten o’clock just confirmed,” she says, barely looking up. “Another corporate executive ready to spill their guts in exchange for immunity.”

I smirk. “They always talk when the fire gets too close.”

She leans in slightly, lowering her voice with a mischievous edge when she says, “Noah texted. He wants to confirm dinner tonight.”

I raise an eyebrow. “You two are having dinner a lot lately.”

Zara’s lips twitch into a faint smile. “Purely professional. Mostly.”

“Uh-huh,” I murmur, pretending to believe her. “Remind him that I know where he works.”

Zara laughs under her breath, shaking her head as she walks out.

Before I can sit, the door opens again, and I feel him before I even see him.

Silas steps inside, dressed in his usual all-black suit that fits him like it was sewn onto his body. No tie, the sleeves slightly rolled. Dangerous and controlled. Still lethal, but now his danger is only ever pointed outward. Never at me.

“You’re early,” I say, smirking.

“Couldn’t resist,” he murmurs, closing the distance between us. His hand finds my waist, possessive and steady. “You’re terrifying up there, you know.”

“Good,” I whisper. “That’s exactly how I want them to see me.”

He presses a soft kiss to my temple and murmurs into my ear, “They see you. And they’re scared for all the right reasons.”

I lean into him for just a breath. This… this is the only place I let my guard drop. “Are you ready for the board meeting?”

“I’m always ready,” he says with a faint grin. “You’re the only one who scares them more than me.”

Evander Vane, my father, rots in federal supermax, forgotten. His appeals failed, his empire dismantled. He spends his days in concrete silence, stripped of everything. The king who lost his crown, his kingdom, and worst of all, me.

Harper Kingston, on the other hand, sits behind bars in a low-security prison, her power drained, reputation destroyed. And Declan Pierce, the coward who traded loyalty for survival, still rots in protective custody, irrelevant and insignificant.

They’re all ghosts now.

Silas walks beside me as we enter the boardroom, where my team, my chosen family, already waits. Survivors who now lead divisions, and whistleblowers who built entire new branches of Isola Enterprises. Fiona sits at the end of the table, nodding at me as I take my seat.

Noah enters last, dropping today’s security report onto the polished surface. “South Asia probe cleared. We froze three shell accounts this morning.”

“Excellent,” I reply, scanning the updates as the meeting begins.

The board settles into business, but my eyes flick toward Silas across the table. He watches me with that same quiet intensity. A man who once served monsters, now standing beside a woman who burned them to the ground.

I was never meant to be owned. Never meant to play by their rules.

I was always meant to rise.

Not broken. Not rebuilt.

Reborn.