Chapter 9: The First Move

I didn't go back to my room. I went to the training hall.

The King estate had been renovated twice since I'd disappeared, new marble, new wings, new security systems, but the underground training facility stayed exactly the same. Concrete floors. Steel beams. The faint smell of gun oil and old sweat. I hadn't been down here in five years, but my feet remembered the way.

The lights flickered on as I pushed through the door. Motion sensors. The space stretched out empty and cold in front of me.

Perfect.

I walked straight to the weapons cabinet and grabbed the handle. Locked.

Of course it was.

"You're not cleared for that anymore."

Rowan's voice echoed through the cavernous room. I didn't turn around. "I was cleared when I was fifteen."

"That was before we thought the threat was neutralized."

I finally looked at him, and I didn't bother hiding the anger. "You thought wrong."

He didn't argue. That was new. He stepped further into the light, his hands loose at his sides but his whole body coiled tight. "You shouldn't be down here alone."

I ignored him and grabbed a weighted training knife from the side table. The balance was perfect, familiar. I flipped it once, felt the weight settle in my palm like coming home.

"I wasn't alone when they took me either," I said.

That shut him up.

I moved to the center mat and found my stance. Muscle memory kicked in, feet shoulder-width apart, knees slightly bent, weight distributed evenly. "You said they wanted leverage," I said, keeping my voice even. "Against you."

"Yes."

"Then why did they stop?"

Silence. Long enough that I knew he didn't want to answer.

"Because we eliminated their leadership," he said finally, but the words sounded hollow even to him.

I laughed, but there was nothing funny about it. "You eliminated the visible leadership."

His jaw went tight. "You think they're still active."

"I think powerful enemies don't just disappear, Rowan. They regroup. They wait." I threw the knife. It spun through the air and buried itself in the target, dead center.

Rowan stared at the vibrating blade. Then at me. "You remember more than you let on."

I froze.

Slowly, I turned to face him. "What did you just say?"

His voice went softer, but not gentle. "When you first came back... you flinched at certain sounds. Certain words. You still won't walk through narrow hallways if you can avoid it."

My stomach dropped.

"I was three," I said carefully. "I shouldn't remember anything."

"You were almost four."

The air left the room.

I'd just admitted something I shouldn't have, a specific detail that proved my memory wasn't as blank as I'd been pretending. Rowan stepped closer, moving like I might bolt if he wasn't careful.

"You remember something," he said.

My chest tightened. Flashes hit me all at once, red smoke curling through a hallway, a man shouting in a language I didn't know, cold air biting my skin, being carried, the weight of arms around me. And a ring. A heavy silver ring with a black crest stamped into it.

I sucked in a breath. "I remember a symbol."

Rowan's entire demeanor shifted. The protective brother act dropped, replaced by something colder. Sharper. "What symbol?"

I hesitated. If I told him, there was no going back. No more pretending this was just about recovering lost memories. But I was done being protected like I was made of glass.

"A black crest. Circular. With a broken crown inside it."

Rowan went completely still. Not tense, still. Like he'd stopped breathing.

"That's impossible." Lucien's voice cut through the silence from the doorway.

Elias appeared behind him, his face drained of color. "No," Elias said quietly. "It's not."

I looked between the three of them. "You know it."

Lucien nodded once, sharp and controlled. "It's the insignia of the original Syndicate faction. The ones who founded the whole operation decades ago."

My pulse spiked. "They're not gone."

Rowan's voice went cold in a way I'd never heard before. "They've been watching."

The air in the room changed. This wasn't the tension from the balcony or the strained family dynamics in the council chamber. This was something else entirely.

This was war.

I straightened my shoulders and lifted my chin. "Then stop hiding me."

Lucien frowned. "Ava, that's not how this works."

"Yes, it is," I said firmly. "You don't keep leverage safe by locking it in a gilded cage. You make it too dangerous to touch."

Elias's mouth twitched, almost a smile. "She's right."

Rowan stared at me, really looked at me, like he was seeing someone completely different than the girl he thought he knew. "You want to be involved."

"I want to stop being the reason you're vulnerable."

Silence settled, heavy and expectant.

Then Lucien's phone buzzed. He pulled it out, glanced at the screen, and his expression went to stone.

"They just made their first move."

My spine went rigid. "What?"

Lucien turned the phone so we could all see. Financial report. One of the King family's primary offshore accounts had been breached. Not emptied. Not stolen.

Tagged.

A digital watermark sat at the bottom of the encrypted file. A black crest. A broken crown.

Beneath it, one line of text:

We never forget what is ours.

The room went dead silent.

Rowan's jaw clenched so hard I heard his teeth grind. "They know she's back."

Elias corrected him quietly. "They want us to know they know."

I felt something unfamiliar bloom in my chest. Not the cold, paralyzing fear I'd carried for years. This was different.

Clarity.

"They're testing response time," I said. "They want to see how fast we react. How aggressive. Whether we panic."

Lucien's gaze snapped to me. "You've been reading our files."

"You left them accessible. I assumed it was a test."

Rowan almost smiled. Almost.

"They took me once," I said, my voice steady now. "Now they're trying to take back the narrative."

Rowan stepped forward, his eyes blazing with something dark and predatory. "No." His voice was absolute. Final. "They don't get to."

For the first time since I'd come back, we weren't arguing about what I was or where I belonged or who had the right to protect me.

We were aligned.

The war that started twenty-one years ago had just resurfaced.

But this time, I wasn't a scared kid in a sundress.

This time, I was holding the knife.