EVERYTHING LEFT UNSAID.

The air inside the study thickened like it was soaked in secrets.

Anais didn’t speak. Couldn’t.

Because the woman standing in the doorway wasn’t a ghost, or a hallucination.

It was her mother.

Alive.

Alive, and real, and staring at her like nothing had ever gone wrong.

She hadn’t aged like time expected her to. Her hair was darker than Anais remembered. Her eyes—still that steel-blue shade—narrowed as they took her in, like she was assessing her own reflection years removed.

“Hello, Anais,” she said calmly.

Julien stood beside her, smug and untouched, as if this had been the plan all along.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” Anais managed.

Her mother’s lips twitched, not quite a smile. “A lot of things are supposed to be. Doesn’t mean they are.”

Julien moved to the sideboard and poured two glasses of dark amber liquid, handing one to her mother. “She kept the right people close. Paid off the wrong ones.”

“Why?” Anais asked. Her voice cracked. “Why would you fake your death? Let me think you—”

“I had to disappear,” her mother cut in. “For my own safety. For yours.”

Anais shook her head. “You left me. You left everything.”

Julien leaned in. “She didn’t leave. She adapted. And she’s back now—to finish what she started.”

Anais turned to her mother. “You’re working with him?”

A pause.

Then her mother said, “I’m working against Cassian Vale. Just like I should have from the beginning.”

Back at the penthouse, Anais couldn’t speak.

Cassian poured her a drink, but she didn’t take it.

She sat on the window ledge, knees drawn up, wrapped in silence.

“She’s alive,” Anais whispered.

Cassian turned from the window, arms crossed. “I know.”

She looked up. “You knew?”

“I suspected.”

Anais stood sharply. “And you didn’t think to tell me?”

“I wasn’t sure,” he said. “There were rumors. Harlan’s files hinted someone was backing Julien, but I didn’t want to believe—”

“Believe what?”

“That she’d betray you.”

Anais pressed her hands to her eyes. “She didn’t just betray me. She rewrote my life and set it on fire.”

Cassian stepped closer, voice low. “Then let me help you take it back.”

She looked at him, something fragile in her eyes. “Why do you care now?”

Cassian paused.

“I’ve always cared.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “You needed me. You used me. But you never—”

“I never knew how to feel anything,” he said. “Not until you stopped trusting me.”

That caught her.

She looked at him again, really looked this time.

The tension between them wasn’t the kind that breaks into arguments. It was the kind that trembles just before it becomes something else.

Cassian reached for her, fingers brushing hers. She didn’t pull away.

But she didn’t move closer either.

“I don’t know who I am anymore,” she said quietly.

“You’re Anais Vale,” he said. “The woman who just exposed Juliet Hale. The woman who doesn’t back down.”

“I’m also the woman being framed for manslaughter,” she said.

He touched her face gently, his thumb brushing beneath her eye.

“You’re not alone in this,” he whispered.

She looked up at him. “Then prove it.”

The next day, Cassian brought her to a location she didn’t expect: an old manufacturing site in Jersey, long shut down and overgrown.

“This used to be Harlan’s first independent operation,” he said. “Before he went underground.”

Anais followed him into the crumbling warehouse, the floorboards groaning under their steps.

“What are we doing here?” she asked.

“Looking for the trigger.”

They found a rusted office in the back, still intact.

Inside, Anais flipped through a file cabinet—empty, except for one folder.

Inside: surveillance stills.

Of her.

From nearly six years ago.

In cafés, boarding school, on her first day at Vale Holdings.

She dropped the folder.

“He’s been watching me that long?”

Cassian picked it up, brows furrowed. “He’s been building a case against you since before your father died.”

“And my mother was in on it,” Anais whispered.

The air shifted.

Cassian looked at her. “We can’t do this piecemeal anymore. If we want to stop them, we have to go all in.”

Anais looked up.

“You mean war.”

He nodded once. “Burn the whole damn thing down.”

That night, Anais couldn’t sleep.

She sat by the window, watching the city buzz below.

Cassian entered quietly, not expecting her to be awake.

She turned. Their eyes met.

“I don’t know how this ends,” she said.

Cassian stepped closer. “Neither do I.”

They were inches apart now.

“I’m tired of pretending I’m fine,” she said.

“Then don’t.”

Silence.

He leaned in, his hand brushing her jaw.

Their lips hovered, not touching.

“You deserve better than this,” he whispered.

Anais exhaled shakily. “I just want something real.”

Their mouths finally met—slow, uncertain, the kiss of two people too scared to say what they feel but too tired to keep hiding it.

When they pulled apart, Anais didn’t speak.

Neither did he.

But for the first time in weeks, something inside her stilled.

She wasn’t alone.

Not anymore.

The next morning, they planned their first strike.

Cassian leaked an anonymous file to the press—proof of Julien’s partnership with Harlan.

Anais scheduled a board session without warning.

She stood before them in black again—this time sharp-voiced, cold-eyed.

“There’s been a breach,” she said. “Julien Vale is collaborating with a known federal fugitive.”

Gasps. Whispers.

She laid out the evidence.

Photographs. Call logs. Offshore transfers.

The board murmured, uneasy.

“We demand a hearing,” one of them said.

“You’ll have it,” Anais replied. “But understand this: if we let this continue, we don’t just lose public trust—we lose everything.”

That night, Anais sat by the fire in the penthouse lounge.

Cassian joined her, quiet.

She looked at him.

“I don’t trust easily,” she said.

He didn’t answer. Just sat beside her.

“But I’m trying,” she added.

He glanced at her. “So am I.”

Silence again.

This time it wasn’t uncomfortable.

It felt earned.

They sat in that silence for a long time, watching the flames flicker.

Then Anais’s phone buzzed.

A message from Irene.

Just two words.

“He moved.”

Anais stood instantly.

Cassian rose beside her. “What happened?”

“Harlan just changed location. He’s off the grid.”

Cassian’s expression darkened.

“Then he’s getting ready.”

“For what?” she asked.

Cassian looked her in the eye.

“To end it.”

Meanwhile, across the city, in a windowless room beneath an unmarked building—

Harlan sat before a glowing monitor.

Beside him, Anais’s mother stood, arms crossed.

“She’s slipping,” Harlan said.

The screen showed grainy footage of Anais kissing Cassian.

Her mother’s eyes narrowed.

“Then it’s time to remind her who she is.”

Harlan nodded.

“Tomorrow, we drop the final file.”

“And if she fights back?” her mother asked.

Harlan smiled coldly.

“She won’t. Not after what we show her.”

He clicked on a folder labeled “Echelon - Archive 07.”

Inside, a photo.

A child.

Cassian.

And beside him—her mother.

Holding a gun.