Lies

CHAPTER FOUR

By nine o'clock the following morning, the financial world was in absolute pandemonium. Every major newspaper, corporate blog, and television channel carried the exact same front-page image: Mark Vance bowing in shame at the Grand Annual Gala beneath the bold headline: *THE GHOST QUEEN RETURNS: SECRET CEO OF TITAN GROUP MARRIES THEODORE VANCE.*

I sat behind the expansive black mahogany desk on the top floor of Titan Group's corporate headquarters, watching the morning sun stream through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows. The room was cold, clean, and quiet. I was finally sitting in the seat I had earned through eight years of silent, tireless labor.

The double doors of my executive suite were suddenly thrown open with a violent bang.

Mark burst into the room. He looked unrecognizable. His hair was messy, his expensive suit was rumpled and unbuttoned, and heavy dark circles hung beneath his bloodshot eyes. He looked like a man who hadn't slept a single minute in thirty-six hours.

"Evelyn! You have to stop this right now!" he screamed, sprinting toward my desk like a madman.

Before he could reach the edge of my carpet, two massive, uniformed security guards stepped out from the side doors. They seized Mark by his arms, forcing him back and pinning him in place.

I didn't flinch. I didn't even lift my pen from the contract I was reviewing. "You are trespassing on private corporate property, Mark. If you do not leave immediately, my security team will have you arrested."

"The banks are freezing every single one of my accounts!" Mark sobbed, his voice cracking into a desperate whine as his knees gave out, forcing the guards to hold up his weight. "Because you rejected the investment deal, the board revoked my executive authority this morning! They are foreclosing on my penthouse! They are taking my parents' cars! We have nothing left! Please, Evelyn, you used to love me! You can't do this to me!"

I slowly placed my pen down on the desk, leaned back in my leather chair, and folded my hands together.

"You had a home, Mark," I said, my voice deadpan and steady. "You had a devoted wife who sat up until three in the morning fixing your mistakes for seven years. You had someone who would have given her life to protect yours. And in return, you let your mother verbally abuse me, you cheated on me, and you threw me down a flight of fifteen stone steps. Did you truly believe the universe would let you keep your unearned luxury after that?"

Before Mark could answer, the office doors swung open a second time.

Sarah walked in. She was carrying a expensive designer suitcase in her left hand and wearing large sunglasses. She didn't look sad, panicked, or remorseful. She looked completely indifferent.

"Stop embarrassing yourself on the floor, Mark," Sarah said smoothly, snapping her fingers at him. She pulled a folded document from her leather handbag and tossed it onto Mark's lap. "It’s over. I’m catching a flight to Milan in two hours."

Mark stared up at her in total disbelief. "What? Sarah, what are you talking about? We have a child! Leo needs his father! We are a family!"

Sarah let out a sharp, mocking laugh that cut through the quiet room like broken glass.

"Mark, you really are as dense as Evelyn’s mother said you were," Sarah sneered, pulling down her sunglasses to glare at him. "Leo isn't your son. He belongs to a nightclub manager I lived with in London three years ago. Your mother and father found me six months ago and paid me fifty thousand dollars to come back here and pretend the boy was yours."

Mark’s face went completely grey, all the color draining from his skin in a fraction of a second. "What... what did you say?" he whispered, his voice trembling violently.

"Your parents were terrified that Evelyn was going to leave you and take her business knowledge with her," Sarah explained carelessly. "They wanted a permanent heir to lock you into the family line, so they bought a child and hired me to play the grieving first love. You didn't build an empire, Mark. You were just a dummy controlled by your mother."

Mark looked as if he had been struck by lightning. The entire foundation of his reality—his pride, his heir, his sudden moral justification for hurting me—was nothing more than a cheap, fabricated lie bought by his own mother. He turned his head slowly toward me, his bloodshot eyes filled with a terrifying, hollow despair.

"Evelyn... my God... Evelyn, I didn't know..." he choked out, tears finally spilling down his pale cheeks. "I swear to you, I didn't know..."

"It does not matter what you knew, Mark," I said, looking at him with absolute detachment. "It only matters what you did."

The side door opened, and Theodore walked into the office. Dressed in a pristine charcoal suit, his presence immediately filled the room with cold authority. He looked down at Mark with pure disgust.

"Security, remove these trespassers from the building," Theodore ordered sharply. "And ensure Mr. Vance's access badge to any Vance property is permanently revoked."

The guards dragged Mark and Sarah out into the hallway. Mark’s pathetic sobbing echoed down the corridor until the heavy oak doors clicked shut, plunging the office back into peaceful silence.

I took a deep, slow breath, feeling a massive weight lift off my chest. The betrayal that had broken my body two weeks ago was finally fully answered.

"It is over," I murmured softly.

"The business matter with Mark is over, yes," Theodore said, walking over to the window and pulling down the blinds slightly. His tone was unusually serious. "But our real problem has just arrived."

I stood up from my desk, watching him closely. "What are you talking about? What happened with the server breach last night?"

Theodore reached into his inner jacket pocket and pulled out an old, velvet-lined wooden box. He laid it gently on the center of my desk. Inside lay a heavy, antique key made of tarnished silver, covered in intricate, ancient geometric engravings that looked almost like mechanical gears.

"Mark was a minor nuisance, Evelyn," Theodore said quietly. "He was never the true target. Someone has been using Mark’s company for the past three years as a front to locate something far more valuable."

I looked at the silver key, feeling a strange, subtle warmth radiating from the metal even from a foot away. "What is this?"

"Twenty years ago, a massive fire destroyed an isolated estate in the northern mountains," Theodore explained, his voice low and solemn. "That estate belonged to the Reed family—a silent, insanely wealthy bloodline that held controlling interests in global energy grids and ancient land titles across three continents. The world believed the entire family perished in that fire. But a child survived. A small girl who was carried away by a loyal butler and placed with a modest middle-class family under a hidden name."

My breath caught in my throat. My hands began to tremble. "My... my parents... the people who raised me..."

"Were paid guardians who loved you and kept you safe," Theodore confirmed gently. "This key belonged to your biological father. It is the master cryptographic key to an off-grid asset vault located on a private island in the North Atlantic. An asset vault containing proof of ownership over energy reserves worth hundreds of billions."

"Why are you telling me this now?" I whispered, my heart pounding violently against my ribs.

"Because the server breach last night at Titan Group was not an attempt to steal your company's money," Theodore revealed, pointing to the key. "They were searching for your biological DNA markers in Titan's employee health records. And thirty minutes ago, my intelligence team confirmed that the breach was executed by the Shadow Syndicate—the very people who set that fire twenty years ago."

As the words left his mouth, the heavy silver key inside the wooden box suddenly gave a sharp, metallic click. The intricate geometric engravings on its surface began to glow with a faint, pulsing blue light.

Before I could ask another question, the overhead fluorescent lights in my office flickered once and completely died, plunging the room into shadow. Outside the glass windows, the emergency sirens across the city grid began to wail in unison.

Theodore immediately drew a sleek black pistol from his shoulder holster. "They found you, Evelyn. We have to move right now."