Semua Bab Rising From The Ashes: Bab 71 - Bab 80

The wind howled across the city skyline, a cold front sweeping in as if mirroring the chill brewing in Natalie Evans’s veins. She stood in the main hall of the Evans Initiative headquarters—an architectural marvel of glass, steel, and fierce determination. The launch gala was only a day away. Her staff moved with calculated urgency, every step rehearsed, every detail scrutinized. But Natalie’s focus wasn’t on flowers or press releases. It was on the invisible war being waged against her.She tightened the belt around her tailored navy coat and adjusted her gloves, preparing to leave. Today’s meeting wasn’t in the office, and it wasn’t about aesthetics. It was strategy.And she was done playing defense.The black SUV cut through the quiet of early morning as it drove toward the edge of the city. Natalie sat in the back seat, silent, scrolling through the latest financial reports and encrypted messages her tech team had decrypted overnight. Adrian’s flash drive had unlocked a hornet’s n

The morning after the gala was anything but calm.Natalie Evans sat at the long table in the conference room of the Evans Initiative headquarters, dressed in a crisp black blazer and a pale blouse, her coffee cooling untouched in front of her. Outside the frosted glass walls, the rest of the office buzzed with frantic phone calls and a press team trying to tame the media frenzy unleashed by her explosive speech the night before.Across from her, Riley Cho tapped rapidly at her tablet, streaming live social media sentiment and major news outlets. Headlines scrolled across the screen:"Natalie Evans Declares War on Corporate Corruption.""Evans Initiative Data Dump Sends Shockwaves Through Industry.""Silicon Giants Linked to Sabotage Plot Against Evans Foundation."Natalie leaned back in her chair, arms crossed. “Give me the breakdown.”Riley blew a breath through her teeth. “Fifty-four million views on your speech in twelve hours. Trending number one globally. We’ve had fifteen whistl

The days that followed felt like the quiet before the earthquake. A deceptive calm. The kind of silence that was never natural—too still, too calculated. Natalie Evans knew better than to relax.She stood alone in the rooftop garden of the Evans Initiative headquarters, the city glittering beneath her like a thousand lies yet to be exposed. The wind tugged gently at her coat as she scrolled through the classified reports Riley had compiled, each page another thread in the growing conspiracy web surrounding NovaLink and its silent partners.A name repeated itself often enough to make her skin crawl.The Sovereign Accord.A ghost organization. No legal footprint. No registered business entities. Yet its members controlled influential shares in oil, defense contracts, biotech, and media conglomerates.“Powerful ghosts,” she murmured under her breath.“They’re more than that,” came a voice from behind her.Natalie didn’t flinch. Adrian Sinclair stepped forward from the shadows, holding tw

The past has a cruel way of waiting until you’re strong—just to test if you’ve really healed.Natalie stared at the photo again, the corners crumpled now from how many times she’d clenched it in her fist. Her father. Alive. Smiling in the company of Damien Rourke. A man who once terrified her now appearing cordial, professional, even familiar.She couldn’t sleep.Even with Adrian quietly dozing beside her on the couch, the hum of the fireplace low and comforting, her mind whirled too fast for rest. She rose gently, grabbed a robe, and padded into her home office.A single lamp cast a pool of golden light over the chaos of maps, reports, and files. She reached into the drawer of her desk and pulled out a worn leather folder—its corners faded, the binding loose. Inside were memories she had buried decades ago. Her mother’s obituary. A sketch Lily had drawn with the word “hope” scrawled in childish block letters. And beneath them, an old police report.It had been filed the night she cal

The blaze had long been extinguished, but the smoke still clung to the air like a stubborn ghost. Charred walls groaned under the weight of ruin, and the Evans Initiative’s once-proud headquarters stood as nothing more than a skeletal monument to resistance.Natalie stood before it, the wind tugging strands of hair across her face, her expression unreadable.She didn’t speak as fire investigators moved around her. She didn’t flinch when a mangled server unit was dragged out of the rubble. But inside, something seismic was cracking. This place—this home they had built from courage, hope, and sacrifice—had been their lighthouse.And now, it was ash.Adrian approached carefully, his boots crunching debris. “We recovered some hard drives. Riley’s backing up whatever data we can salvage.”She nodded once.“Elias is okay. Cassandra got him out in time. But... this was personal.”“It always has been,” Natalie whispered.He waited a moment, then asked, “What do you want to do?”She turned slo