PAPER CUTS AND WOUNDS YOU CAN’T SEE.

There’s a silence Anais had never heard before. Not the absence of noise, but the space between expectation and collapse. It’s the silence before something breaks.

That’s what the morning felt like.

She sat alone in her office at Vale Holdings, the light outside too still, too bright. Her phone buzzed, screen flashing with a number she didn’t recognize. She let it ring.

Then it rang again.

Same number.

Something in her chest stirred.

She picked up on the third try.

“Anais Vale?” a deep voice asked.

“Yes?”

“This is Detective Moore, NYPD.”

She froze.

“There’s been a development in the Fallpoint investigation. We’d like you to come in.”

Anais blinked slowly. “That was a sealed case.”

“There’s new evidence.”

She gripped the desk. “What kind of evidence?”

The voice didn’t answer directly. “We’ll explain when you arrive.”

Click.

By the time Anais reached the station, Cassian was already there, pacing.

He looked up when she entered—something dark and tight around his eyes.

“You didn’t tell me they called you,” she said.

“They didn’t. I was already on my way.”

“Why?”

“Because Harlan just did something.”

Cassian handed her a manila envelope.

Inside: printed screenshots. Bank transactions. A digital footprint trail that linked Anais—Anais, not Cassian—to a wire transfer made five years ago to a shell company overseas.

Fallpoint.

Anais felt her throat dry up.

“This isn’t real.”

Cassian nodded. “It’s planted. Expertly. But it has your signature. Your old login. Your PIN.”

“I never—”

“I know. But the paper trail says otherwise.”

She stared at him. “They think I killed those people.”

“They think you funded it.”

The interrogation room was cold.

Detective Moore didn’t shout. Didn’t accuse.

He just opened a folder and pushed it across the table.

The wire. The date. The name of a safety inspector who went missing three days before the Fallpoint explosion.

“Tell me,” he said, “have you ever heard of this man?”

Anais stared down at the name: Henry DeMarco.

It meant nothing to her.

She shook her head slowly. “No.”

Moore didn’t flinch. “He received $50,000 through a Cayman Islands account one week before the incident. The same account that connects to this wire, signed by you.”

Anais gripped the edge of the table.

“It’s a frame.”

“Can you prove that?”

Silence.

By the time she got back to the office, the headlines were already spreading.

Heiress to Vale Holdings Implicated in Fallpoint Scandal.

Anonymous Whistleblower Releases Financial Evidence Linking Anais Vale to Fatal Explosion.

The press flooded the lobby.

Security barely held them off.

Anais stood in the elevator, shoulders pressed to the back wall, watching her own name flash across breaking news banners on her phone.

Someone had gone to war.

And they were winning.

Cassian didn’t go home that night.

Neither did Anais.

They met in a hotel room two blocks from the courthouse—anonymous and windowless. Like fugitives.

Cassian poured her a drink.

Anais didn’t touch it.

She sat on the edge of the bed, staring down at her hands. They weren’t shaking. That scared her more.

“Why now?” she asked.

Cassian didn’t answer at first. Then:

“Because you beat Juliet.”

Anais looked up.

“Harlan knew she was a pawn. She failed. So now he’s using what she gave him.”

“He couldn’t have gotten that information alone.”

Cassian nodded. “I think he had help.”

“From who?”

“I don’t know yet.”

Anais looked at him, something sharp rising in her.

“Are you sure?”

Cassian met her eyes.

And didn’t look away.

The next morning, Irene stormed into Anais’s office holding a folder so thick it looked like a novel.

“I found it.”

Anais stood. “What?”

“Everything.”

Inside: Harlan’s entire campaign. The digital forging. The offshore accounts. The connection to a former Vale IT manager who disappeared four years ago.

“He created a ghost version of you,” Irene said. “He’s been planning this for years.”

Anais flipped through the files.

And then she saw it.

One name. A signature on a wire transfer.

Julien Vale.

She stared at it, her stomach twisting.

Cassian’s cousin.

The one who vanished after Juliet’s downfall.

The one who had always smiled too easily.

“He was in on it,” she whispered.

Irene nodded. “Julien gave Harlan access. The back door into the company’s internal system.”

Anais closed the folder.

“Let’s ruin him.”

Two days later, Anais held a press conference.

Calm. Controlled. Dressed in black.

She walked up to the podium, flanked by her legal team and Cassian—stone-faced beside her.

“I am not the woman these accusations paint,” she said into a hundred microphones. “But I am the woman who will fight back.”

She laid out the files.

The forgeries. The faked accounts. The trail back to Harlan Quinn.

And then she held up the final piece:

A recorded conversation.

Harlan’s voice.

“She’ll break. She always does. Just like her mother.”

The reporters froze.

Anais leaned in.

“But I won’t. Not this time.”

But just as she stepped away from the podium, her phone buzzed.

Irene.

Anais answered, stepping into the wings of the stage.

“I found Julien,” Irene whispered.

Anais froze.

“Where?”

Irene hesitated.

“Your father’s house.”

Anais blinked.

“My father’s dead.”

“I know. But someone’s living there. Someone pretending to be part of your family.”

Anais stared out at the flashing cameras.

Her pulse roared in her ears.

“I’m on my way.”

The house sat at the edge of Long Island Sound.

Old, forgotten, quiet.

Anais hadn’t been back in over ten years.

She drove herself.

No guards. No escort.

When she arrived, the front door was unlocked.

Inside smelled like time. Damp wood. Dust. And perfume she hadn’t worn since she was a teenager.

She climbed the stairs slowly.

The study was lit.

Julien sat behind their father’s desk, sipping a drink like it was his birthright.

“You came,” he said.

Anais didn’t speak.

“You were always good at speeches,” he went on. “The press loves you. But they don’t know you.”

She stepped closer. “You betrayed us.”

Julien smiled faintly. “You made it so easy.”

Anais’s voice dropped. “Why?”

Julien leaned back, eyes sharp.

“Because you were never supposed to win.”

He stood, walked to the window.

“You were a face. A distraction. And then you got ideas. Thought you could lead. But this empire? It’s rot, Anais. It needs a new architect.”

She crossed her arms. “And you think that’s you?”

“No,” Julien said, turning back.

“It’s Harlan.”

Then, behind her, the door creaked.

Anais turned—

—and saw her mother.

Alive.