LOGINVLADIMIR'S POV:I have been waiting for this moment for twelve years.Twelve years of patience. Twelve years of planning. Twelve years of watching this family from the shadows, waiting for the right moment to strike. The Ashcrofts and the Valancourts destroyed my empire. They destroyed my son life. They took everything from me. And now, finally, I am going to make them pay.I sit in my safe house, the same concrete room where I have been hiding for months. The walls are bare and the windows are boarded. The only light comes from a single bulb hanging from the ceiling. But I do not care about the surroundings. I care about the plan. The plan that I have been building for over a decade.The plan that is finally coming together. I have been patient. I have been waiting. And now, finally, I have my weapon.She has done exactly what I asked. She has planted the seeds of doubt. She has torn them apart from the inside. She has made them turn on each other. And now, it is time for the final p
CELESTINE'S POV:The stone bench where I am sitting in the garden is cold beneath me, and I am shivering, but I do not move. I cannot move. My legs have forgotten how to carry me.Lysander is beside me. His arm is around my shoulders. His body is warm against mine. But I cannot feel the warmth. I cannot feel anything except the hollow ache in my chest, the place where my heart used to be before Elara ripped it out and threw it on the ground.She hates me.That is the thought that circles through my head, over and over again, a loop that will not stop. She hates me. She believes I murdered her mother. She believes I conspired to kill her father. She believes I have been using her since the day she arrived.I have loved her for twelve years. Twelve years of holding her when she cried. Twelve years of tucking her into bed. Twelve years of reading her stories and kissing her forehead and telling her I loved her every single day.And she hates me.I look at Lysander. His gray eyes are dark
ELARA'S POV:"Elara," he says. "Please. Listen to me. Whatever you think you know—""I know enough," I say interrupting him. "I know that you killed my family, all of you and that is enough for me.""That is not true.""Prove it."He opens his mouth and then closes it. He does not know what to say. He does not know how to defend himself against what I have been told.I turn and walk away.**CELESTINE'S POV:**I am in the kitchen when I hear the voices.I walk to the window. I look out at the garden and I see Lysander and Elara standing on the stone bench. Their faces are tense. Their voices are raised.My heart starts pounding. I push open the back door and walk toward them."—killed my mother," Elara is saying. "You and everyone in this family is pure evil."I freeze with my blood running cold."Elara," I say. "What are you talking about?"She turns to look at me. Her green eyes are hard. Her face is pale."The letter," she says. "From my father. He told me everything."My throat
LYSANDER'S POV:I found her in the garden after I checked in her room and didn't see her there early the next morning.She is sitting on the stone bench, the one that overlooks the valley, the one where Celestine and I used to sit when we were first falling in love. She has a book in her hands, but I noticed she is not reading it. She is staring out at the distant hills, her face expressionless, her green eyes empty.I walk toward her. My footsteps are heavy on the gravel. She hears me coming but she does not turn nor does she not acknowledge me.I stop a few feet away and I hold up my phone. The screen glows with the message I found. The message that proves she is a traitor."Elara," I say. "Explain this. This is from your phone."She looks at me. Her face goes pale. For a moment, just a moment, I see the mask slip. I see the fear underneath, with rhe guilt and the panic.Then she recovers and her expression smooths and even her voice is steady."That is not from my phone," she says.
ALISTAIR'S POV:He is sitting at his desk, his head in his hands, his shoulders slumped. He looks so tired and broken.I do not know what to say. I do not know how to tell him that his daughter who is also my sister is a traitor.I take a breath. I walk toward him. I stop in front of his desk."Dad," I say.He looks up and his gray eyes are red."Alistair? What are you doing still up?""I need to show you something dad."I open my laptop. I pull up the screenshot. I turn the screen toward him.He looks at it and after some minutes his face goes white and his hands start shaking."Elara?" he whispers. "Our own Elara?"I nod my head and my voice is steady.He stares at me. His mouth opens and closes but no words come out. He looks like he has been punched in the gut. He looks like the world has just collapsed around him.I think about my mother. About the stories she told me about her first marriage. About Kier Thornwell and the thousand times she forgave him. About the lies and the cru
ALISTAIR'S POV:I have been reading computer science books since I was six.That is not an exaggeration. My parents have photographs of me sitting on the floor of the library, surrounded by books that most adults would not understand, my small fingers tracing the diagrams of code and algorithms. They thought it was cute. They thought it was a phase. They did not realize that I was actually learning, actually absorbing, actually becoming something that most people would not understand.I am fourteen now. I can hack into systems that would take adults days to crack. I can write code that makes people weep with envy. I can find things that people do not want found.And now, I am going to use those skills to prove that my sister is a traitor.I sit in my room with my door locked, the lights dim because it's night time, my laptop open on my desk. My laptop screen glows in the darkness, casting blue light across my very handsome face, lol, I am handsome. My fingers hover over the keyboard.
Celestine woke up the next morning to sunlight streaming through her windows and birds singing in the garden and the strange unfamiliar feeling of peace settling over her like a blanket.She lay in bed for a long time, staring at the ceiling, listening to the sounds of the house waking up around he
She watched from the window as her father walked out to greet him.August Valancourt shook Lysander's hand with both of his, the way he did with people he truly respected, and he said something that made Lysander nod solemnly. Then her mother appeared, and Isabelle kissed Lysander on both cheeks, t
Her phone buzzed.She pulled it out of her pocket. A message from Harold Wentworth, her father's lawyer."Divorce papers are ready. I've emailed them to you. Print, sign, and leave them for him. I'll handle the rest."She opened the email. Scrolled through the document. Page after page of legal lan
The drive back to Valancourt House as the sun began to set was comfortable and filled with the type of easy silence that Celestine had never experienced with anyone before, not even during the early days of her marriage when Kier was still pretending to be a decent husband who cared about her feeli







