Chapter Fifteen

 The Price of Love

When Aurora woke, the world was silent.

Not the peaceful kind of silence — the kind that follows devastation.

A stillness that hums with absence.

The warehouse was gone. The rain. The gunfire. Even Zane’s voice — erased as if it had never existed.

She was lying on a narrow bed in a dim, unfamiliar room. The air smelled of salt and old wood. Faint light filtered through the cracks in the boarded window. Her head throbbed. Her hands were bandaged.

For a few long seconds, she couldn’t move. Her body remembered before her mind did — the sprint through the storm, the shouting, the flash of a gun. And then the sound. That one final sound she had prayed not to hear again.

The shot.

Her breath came in shallow gasps.

“No,” she whispered. “No, no, no…”

The door creaked open.

“Don’t move too fast,” a voice said softly. “You’ve lost a lot of blood.”

Aurora turned sharply — and froze.

The woman in the doorway was tall, poised, dressed in black. Sharp eyes, sharper voice. There was something chillingly familiar about her.

Her expression was calm, but her presence screamed danger.

“Who are you?” Aurora demanded.

The woman tilted her head. “Someone who used to owe Zane a favor.”

Her pulse spiked. “Then you know where he is.”

A faint smile curved the woman’s lips — not kind, but knowing. “Alive. For now.”

Aurora’s heart leapt. “Take me to him.”

The woman stepped closer. “You don’t understand, sweetheart. Zane didn’t want you to find him. He wanted you safe.”

“I’ve heard that before,” Aurora snapped. “And it’s never been true.”

The woman studied her for a long moment, then said quietly, “You really love him.”

Aurora’s voice broke. “I don’t even know what that word means anymore. I just know I can’t breathe if I think he’s gone.”

That earned a flicker of something almost like respect. “You sound like him. Stubborn. Stupid. Brave.”

“Where is he?”

The woman hesitated, then handed her a folded note. “He left this before the raid. Said if you woke up, you’d come looking. But you need to understand — there’s no going back from this.”

Aurora unfolded the paper with trembling hands.

Zane’s handwriting — sharp, decisive, familiar.

> Aurora,

If you’re reading this, I’m gone again. I don’t want you to follow.

What I’ve done can’t be undone — and what I have to do next will destroy anyone near me.

Please. Forget me.

Live.

For both of us.

— Z.

Her fingers clenched around the page. “Forget him?” she whispered. “He knows that’s impossible.”

When she looked up, the woman was watching her with something between pity and admiration.

“What’s your name?” Aurora asked.

The woman smirked. “Elara.”

“Elara,” Aurora repeated, tasting the name like a challenge. “If you really owed him a favor, then help me finish what he started.”

Elara raised a brow. “You want revenge?”

“No,” Aurora said coldly. “I want truth.”

---

They left before sunrise.

The city was still half-asleep, shrouded in mist that blurred the edges of everything. Aurora sat in the passenger seat of Elara’s car, Zane’s note folded tight in her hand. The docks disappeared in the rearview mirror, swallowed by fog.

Elara drove like a woman who didn’t need directions. “You know, Wilson men never die quietly,” she said.

Aurora glanced at her. “You know his family?”

“I worked for them once. Until I realized they don’t build empires — they bury people under them.”

Aurora’s throat tightened. “He tried to stop them.”

Elara nodded. “And that’s what got him killed.”

“He’s not dead,” Aurora said fiercely. “He can’t be.”

Elara didn’t argue. She didn’t have to. The silence was heavy enough to make Aurora’s chest ache.

---

They reached a safe house on the edge of Brooklyn — a nondescript apartment above a shuttered bar. Inside, Elara opened a secure laptop and set it on the table.

“Zane wasn’t the only one collecting data,” she said. “Before he went dark, he sent me a backup of everything — bank logs, offshore accounts, coded memos. It’s all here.”

Aurora leaned over the screen, her heart hammering. “Show me.”

Rows of encrypted files filled the display. Elara clicked one open — a document filled with transactions linked to Wilson Group subsidiaries. It was worse than Aurora imagined. Money laundering. Political bribes. Corporate espionage.

And then one line that froze her blood cold:

> Project Lyra — Phase Two: Aurora Lupin

“What—what is this?” she whispered.

Elara’s jaw tightened. “It’s not a project. It’s a contingency plan.”

“For what?”

“For control.”

Aurora stared at the file. Her name. Her life. Every move she’d made inside the company — tracked, analyzed, manipulated. It hadn’t been coincidence. It had been design.

“They didn’t just recruit you,” Elara said. “They built you. You were part of their strategy — leverage for Zane. They groomed you to be the one thing he couldn’t destroy.”

Aurora felt the room tilt. “You’re lying.”

Elara’s gaze softened. “I wish I were.”

The words hit like a blade. All her hard work, her sacrifices, her ambition — had they all been part of someone else’s plan? A puppet strung by invisible hands?

“No,” Aurora whispered. “I don’t believe it.”

“Then prove it wrong,” Elara said. “Finish what he started.”

Aurora’s hands trembled as she scrolled through the files. Every truth she uncovered cut deeper. Every secret dragged her closer to the man who had tried to protect her from this nightmare.

And somewhere inside the labyrinth of code and corruption, one name appeared again and again — Zane Wilson, marked as missing in action.

---

By midnight, Aurora had made her choice.

She closed the laptop and stared out the window, watching the city lights flicker through the fog. “If he’s alive, I’ll find him,” she said quietly. “And if he’s dead… I’ll burn everything that killed him.”

Elara smirked. “You sound like a Wilson now.”

Aurora turned toward her, eyes dark with resolve. “No. I sound like the woman they tried to destroy.”

She reached into her bag, pulling out the silver key Zane had once given her — the one he said opened “the future.” She turned it over in her palm.

A whisper, a memory: You’ll know when to use it.

And then, as lightning split the sky, Aurora finally understood.

The key wasn’t for escape.

It was for war.

---