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Elena’s POVThere are moments when the world stands still….not in peace, but in the breathless tension before the sword falls.I was standing in that moment now.The cell was silent, almost reverent. The guards had stopped speaking. The news tickers had gone quiet. The media frenzy had peaked and collapsed into exhausted speculation. And I, Elena Montrose….the accused heiress, the fallen CEO, the Syndicate’s unwanted queen was trapped in a holding facility with no allies left.Or so I thought.Until the lock on the door clicked open.Not in the slow, deliberate way of federal procedure.But with urgency.With purpose.With “him”.Damien.He stepped through the doorway like a man risen from the ashes. His eyes burned darker than ever….shoulders squared, jaw clenched. His tailored suit was dusted with soot and blood as if he’d walked through a battlefield just to reach me.“You came back,” I whispered.He didn't speak. He simply strode forward and pulled me into his arms.And I let him.
Elena’s POVPower is a knife; you either wield it or bleed from it.And tonight, I was both the wielder and the wound.The ink on my Syndicate allegiance hadn’t even dried before I took my first strike. I didn’t wait for permission. I didn’t consult the Circle. I simply movedFrom the Evexia war room – our underground bunker reconfigured for shadow warfare. I ordered a cyber-strike through the Syndicate’s mirror network.My target: Sierra’s off-grid shell accounts, the ones she used to funnel dark money, launder bribes, and manipulate boardroom puppets across five continents.“You’re sure we can breach it?” I asked the hacker seated beside me – an old Syndicate loyalist called Specter.“She’s good,” he said, fingers gliding over a half-dozen monitors. “But I’m better. Give me three minutes, and I’ll make her fortune bleed from the inside out.”“You have one.”He smirked. “Understood.”The countdown began. Behind us, Victor stood silently by the door, a ghost of muscle and tension. He
Elena’s POVThey came for me in the dead of night.No message. No warning. Just a sleek black car waiting outside Evexia HQ, its driver holding out a gloved hand and a single phrase: “The Circle is ready for you.”I didn’t ask where we were going. I already knew.Victor tried to follow, but I held up a hand. “No weapons. No shadows. If I don’t return in six hours, light the fuse.”His jaw tightened. “This is a trap, Elena.”“They don’t need a trap,” I said. “They already have my leverage.”Damien.He’d vanished off the grid, but I knew where he was. Or more accurately…..who had him? This was the only invitation that mattered now.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The meeting took place beneath the oldest estate in Vienna…..one once owned by my grandfather before the Syndicate erased him.It was a court, but not the kind built for justice. It was built for legacy. The floor was obsidian. The ceiling is dom
Elena’s POVThe glass door slammed so hard it echoed like a gunshot.I tore away from Victor, breath catching, panic curling in my gut. I already knew who it was-----Damien…….I chased after the sound, my heels echoing through the corridor. By the time I reached the elevator, the doors had already closed.Gone.I pressed the emergency override…..nothing. He’d locked me out of his tracking permissions.No. No, no, no.“Victor, stay here,” I snapped. “Don’t move. Don’t talk to anyone. And for God’s sake, don’t follow me.”His eyes searched mine, unreadable. “Elena—”“I mean it.”Because right now, I couldn’t tell if I was furious with him… or with myself.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Damien’s penthouse was dark when I stormed in, lights untouched, the city’s skyline casting long shadows across the marble.He stood at the bar, back turned, nursing a glass of something amber and expensive. His jacket was discarded, s
Elena’s POVSome ghosts knock.Others walk straight through the door.Victor didn’t knock.He just appeared…..drenched from the rain, coat draped across broad shoulders, that familiar scar still slashing through his eyebrow like a story never told. For a second, I forgot how to breathe.I’d buried him years ago. Mourned him. Lit a candle on my birthday every year in his name.My father’s most trusted bodyguard.My first betrayal.My first heartbreak.My first love.“You’re supposed to be dead”, I whispered, pulse roaring in my ears.“And yet, here I am.” His voice was rough, a rasp dragged from the dead.He stepped closer.“I didn’t come back to haunt you,” he said. “I came back to warn you.”---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The Evexia command center was silent when I led him inside. Security had cleared the floor. No cameras. No eyes.Just me, Victor, and a truth I wasn’t ready to face.“I watched you die,” I sa
Elena’s POVThe world didn’t end in a fiery explosion or a dramatic boardroom vote.It ended with the sound of my heels clicking against the marble floors of Evexia’s global headquarters alone.The security guards stepped aside the moment they saw me. They knew the shift had come.I was no longer half of an empire. I was the empire.And Damien… Damien was gone from my inner circle.For now.The glass doors to the executive wing hissed open, and I stepped inside. His cologne still lingered in the air - a ghost of something that once made me feel invincible. Now, it felt like poison.I passed the twin portraits that had once symbolized our co-leadership. Mine was already being moved to the central position. His? Turned against the wall.“Madam Montrose,” Sophia, my executive assistant, greeted softly, “I’ve drafted the revised org chart. Damien’s daily oversight has been shifted. You’ll be the sole signatory on acquisitions, finance, and security protocols. Shall I confirm the board mem
Damien’s POVThe message arrived sealed in obsidian wax - Crest Holdings’ private mark. No digital trace, no timestamp. Just three words:“Come alone. Midnight.”I didn’t tell Elena. Not yet. She was still reeling from the mole, her mind split between vengeance and vigilance. If there was even a sliver of truth behind Gavin’s presence, the Syndicate’s roots ran deeper than either of us had feared.I arrived at the rendezvous: the Crown Gallery atop the Old Montclaire Bank, a place where men like Richard Crest once shaped countries with a signature.He waited by the windows, backlit by moonlight, wrapped in a charcoal coat that whispered money and menace.“You’ve made waves, Damien,” Richard said, turning. “Toppling the old, propping up the new. But your love life - it complicates things.”I kept my voice flat. “Cut to it.”He didn’t hesitate.“Surrender Elena. Publicly denounce her. Leak old files. Tear her down legally, and strategically. You’ll inherit Crest Holdings unopposed - and
Elena’s POVI recognized him the moment he stepped into the interrogation chamber…..though I hadn’t seen him in nearly two decades.No disguise could hide the faint scar on his chin, the one I gave him when I was seven and insisted on learning to fence with real blades. My father’s favorite protégé. The one who called me “Little Titan” behind my back because I never stayed down.Gavin Langston.He looked older, but not weaker…..suave in a tailored midnight suit, silver cufflinks shaped like crests. Not our crest, but something adjacent. Twisted.He gave me a slow, appraising smile.“I expected Damien,” he said. “But it had to be you, didn’t it?”I kept my expression unreadable. “You’re the mole.”He didn’t deny it.“Tell me,” I said quietly, “did you betray my father too?”Gavin leaned back in the chair as though we were catching up over espresso, not confronting treason. “I served your father until the end. But when his end came… the Montrose legacy should’ve died with him. Yet here
Damien’s POVThe warning came at 3:17 a.m.A silent ping from the firewall Damien had personally coded two years ago, back when trusting anyone meant dying a little slower.He was already halfway out of bed, shirt in hand, when Elena stirred.“Is it another breach?” she asked, voice gravel-soft with sleep.“Worse”, he said, slipping into his suit jacket. “It wasn’t a breach. It was a delivery.”-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The Evexia war room was already glowing with red alerts by the time Damien arrived. Kael stood by the digital screen, arms crossed, jaw tight. Reina was at her station, decrypting furiously, while Lucien paced with his phone to his ear.“It was routed through five onion layers,” Reina said without looking up. “But I cracked the sequence. This was meant to be intercepted by us.”“Deliberately leaked?” Damien asked.Reina nodded. “Like someone wants you to see it.”Kael turned, tapping th