All Chapters of The Unmasked Heiress: Isabella Hartman is back: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Vivianne Hawking's pov :And as we settled inside, the timeless pressure in the stone walls grew loud, the serpentine symbols carving the domain glowing softly, as they always had, since they had guided The Oracle: the Circle of Nine, centuries ago. My eight followers asked no questions, and they remained shrouded in darkness, all the more a sign of my unopposed power. With my back to them, my raven hair shot through with silver, emerald eyes the same as Isabella’s but now covered with a Jade contact. Every square, every piece, charted lives we’d formed, empires we’d conquered, moves planned with precision. “Hmm,” my voice was low, deliberate, it woke the silence. “Well now, it looks like our player has stepped off the game board.”Maggie Rowe. The name soured my tongue. She’d been my puppet, Victor Hartman’s illegitimate daughter, shaped by my will to destabilize Isabella, to crush Ashcroft and Blackvale to our advantage. Her betrayal — screwing over Isabella for Lilian’s murder, lea

Bellas pov-The rooftop in Belgrade where Maggie hung dead, impaled and bleeding, had been a bad dream I’d run away from, but its darkness pursued me until I touched down in San Francisco, eyes blank, hair of nearly black chestnut rough beneath the hoodie I’d thrown on. The media had swarmed like vultures, cameras hungrily absorbing every grotesque detail of Maggie’s murder. Newspaper headlines announced the horrors via the internet: “Maggie Rowe Slain in Savage Spectacle!” “Who Killed the Whistle-Blower? The videos of her impaled corpse had streamed through X, as the tags #MaggieMassacre trended and a series of blockbuster wounds ripping through the world’s collective psyche had gone viral. Questions flew — who had she been targeted by, who was The Oracle, what did her expose mean? —but there were no answers, only fear, a red tide rising beneath a sky that, tonight, hung an unnatural crimson above San Francisco.The blood-red moon was in the sky, and the outcry of a city in terror fi

Ethans pov-The wall of the huge television screen shimmered in the low light, leaving deep contrasted shadows on his aged face, while he sat in his high backed chair holding on to the chair’s armrest with his gnarled fingers. A news anchor’s voice droned continuously, playing the grisly footage of Maggie’s body — skewered on a pole, hanging in the Belgrade moonlight as though a puppet severed from its strings. I felt my stomach knot up, not with guilt but with annoyance. Maggie was a hanging chad, and her revealing Victor Hartman’s genetic experiments and her announcement of herself as Isabella’s stepsister were a match tossed recklessly into a powder keg. But this brutal display? It was messier than I felt I could afford; messiness is a luxury that is hard to come by in my life at the moment.I folded my arms, my tailored business suit sharp, and my gray eyes making a mask of concern. The Oracle: the Circle of Nine, Isabella, Elijah. Just hearing his name was enough to make my jaw c

Vivianne’s pov-We, the nine, were seated in our places of power, wrapped in shadow, faces hidden in the wan flicker of torchlight, the air heavy with untold centuries of secrets. It was I, Vivianne Hawkings who took the center stage, silver-streaked raven tresses and jade eyes locked upon the giant board carved into the wall across from us. Every square, every piece, embodied lives we’d spun, empires we’d crushed, futures created and crushed with coldblooded precision. Isabella teetering but still standing, a flicker of my own fire, something that both threatened and tempted me.Her name had been called, our twisted voice cutting into her weak resolve. “Greeting from the Oracles,” we had said, and I’d felt her pulse quicken, even across the ether, challenge buzzing against me. She'd asked where she could find us, rash but not so clever, her voice cutting with the same determination I'd once wielded before this Circle took me. “You don’t,” we replied, “we’ll come and find you.” The wo

Bella's povThe sound of my boots were soft on the ground, my breath cold with that sharp salty bite of the bay in the morning. My hair stuck to my forehead and face, every nerve was electric with horror and rebellion. I’d slipped through Elijah’s security, their strings of attention suffocating. I needed to be alone, to think. The city was alive with malice.A low rumble filled the air, and I stilled, my breath catching as a sleek, black Rolls-Royce with dark windows silently pulled to a halt beside me. My hand automatically went to the knife in my boot, my heart pounding, a combination of fear and determination. The back window whirred down and darkness gaped out of it. A voice, robotic and unnatural, poured from the deep. “Get in, Isabella Hartman.” My stomach twisted, vivid green eyes narrowing. The Oracles, it had to be them. Every instinct screamed to run, to escape, but running hadn’t saved Maggie, hadn’t kept the locket stained with my mother’s blood, the list with her name—Vi