Chapter 3: The Empty Throne

Iridessa’s POV

The hospital room was deathly quiet, the only sound being the rhythmic hum of a heart monitor and the soft rustle of expensive suit fabric as my older brother, Cassian, paced the length of the private suite. I watched him from the bed, feeling the throbbing ache in my cheek where Slade had struck me, but the physical pain was nothing compared to the cold, dead weight in my stomach when I thought about those three years of wasted effort. Cassian finally stopped and looked at me, his face a mask of barely controlled fury that usually made world-class CEOs tremble, and he reached out to gently touch the bruising on my jaw with a hand that was shaking from rage.

​"I told you three years ago that these people were beneath you, Iridessa, but you insisted on playing the martyr because you thought you owed that girl your life," Cassian said, his voice dropping into a low, dangerous register as he pulled a tablet from his pocket and tapped a few icons. "The divorce papers have already been served to the Wilder mansion, and I’ve taken the liberty of freezing every secondary account linked to your personal trust, which happens to be the only thing keeping their lifestyle afloat right now."

​I leaned back against the pillows and closed my eyes, the image of Slade holding Malani in his arms flashing behind my eyelids like a recurring nightmare, and I took a deep breath that felt like the first real air I’d tasted in years. "I wanted to believe they were capable of change, Cassian, I really thought if I gave them everything they would eventually see me as a person and not just a tool," I murmured, and my brother scoffed, clicking his tongue against his teeth while he pulled up a live feed of the Wilder Tech stock prices.

​"They never saw you at all, because they were too busy staring at the money they thought was theirs, but the 'Ghost' is officially offline now," he said, turning the screen toward me so I could see the red lines plummeting toward the bottom of the graph. "The Vanguard system entered lockdown ten minutes ago, and since you were the one who built the architecture from your bedroom while they treated you like a maid, Slade is currently finding out that his empire is built on sand."

​I could almost see Slade in his office, his face turning that shade of purple it always did when things didn't go his way, and a small, bitter smile touched my lips as I realized he was probably screaming at his engineers to fix a problem they didn't even have the credentials to access. Just as Cassian was about to say something else, the heavy oak doors of the suite swung open and my father stepped in, his presence so commanding that the nurses in the hall had stopped in their tracks. He didn't say a word at first, he just walked to the side of my bed and looked at the bruise on my face, and for a second I saw the terrifying power of the man the world knew as the "Iron Patriarch" of the Sterling family.

​"I gave you three years to find your own way, but you chose to let a dog bite the hand that fed him," my father said, his voice echoing in the sterile room, and he looked at Cassian before adding, "Release the acquisition notices for Wilder Tech's debt, because I want them to realize that the woman they humiliated is the only reason they still have a roof over their heads."

​I felt a surge of something I hadn't felt in a long time, a spark of the old Iridessa who used to command boardrooms before I traded my pride for a marriage certificate, and I sat up straighter despite the dizziness. "I don't want you to just buy them out, Father, I want them to see exactly who I am when I’m not playing the role of the obedient wife," I said, and the two most powerful men in the country looked at me with identical expressions of grim satisfaction.

​"Good, because the board meeting is in forty-eight hours, and I expect you to be there to sign the termination papers for the CEO personally," Cassian noted, tossing a folder onto my lap that contained the deed to the Wilder estate and the intellectual property rights to every product Slade claimed to have invented.

​I spent the rest of the afternoon watching the news reports of the "unprecedented technical glitch" at Wilder Tech, and I couldn't help but laugh when a clip played of Slade’s mother, Penelope, trying to dodge reporters outside a boutique. She looked frantic, her designer bag swinging wildly as she screamed at a cameraman, and I knew she was probably wondering why her credit cards had been declined at the register for the first time in her life.

​By the time evening rolled around, the hospital room was filled with white lilies and the scent of expensive perfume, and I felt a strange sense of peace as I watched the sun set over the city skyline. I knew that tomorrow would be the beginning of a war, one that the Wilders were completely unprepared to fight, because they were still operating under the assumption that I was a girl with no family and no options. They had no idea that I had been the silent investor behind their competitors for years, or that the very air they breathed was a gift I was about to revoke.

​I was just about to fall into a light sleep when my phone buzzed on the nightstand, and I saw a text from an unsaved number that I knew belonged to Slade. 'I know you’re the one behind the system crash, Iridessa. Stop this childish game and come home right now so we can fix this before you ruin everything I’ve built.'

​I stared at the message, the sheer arrogance of it making my blood run cold, and I didn't even bother to type a response because some things were better said in person. I simply blocked the number and turned the phone off.