Twisted Secrets Novels & Stories

in the boardroom had been a performance for an audience of one. "The Trojan horse," I said, my voice cold and hollow. "It didn't just wipe the servers, did it? It redirected the proprietary encryption keys. Who holds the Medusa core now, Liam? Since it's no longer on the Sterling servers and the Vane estate is frozen?" Liam didn't blink. He didn't turn away. "The data is in a secure, private vault," he said. "It’s under a dual-key encryption. One is held by the federal investigators."

before the reset. "Director Thorne is dead, and Eleanor Hawke is in a Swiss detention center," the Auditor reported. "The Trident Group is technically bankrupt. But the assets—the physical land, the undersea cables, the private satellites—they still exist. They just have no owners." "Not yet," Silas said. He tapped a command on his console. Across the screens, a new logo appeared. It wasn't the weeping willow of Van Dyne or the hawk of the Hawke Corporation. It was a simple, geometric Ouroboros—a snake devouring its own tail.

End Flashback Elias checked his remaining resources. He had access to three distinct caches: a set of forged identities, a small amount of liquid digital currency, and a remote access key to a highly protected, non-Syndicate server—the "secret garden" Marcus had insisted he plant years ago. The server was a digital safe house, designed to withstand a level-three trace.

I didn’t blame him. I found the contact list first, scanning it quickly. There were a lot of names I didn’t recognize, a few encrypted messages that made my stomach churn. But then, I found something that caught my eye: a number, no name attached, but the messages were recent — almost too recent. I held up the phone, showing it to Adriano. "This might be something." Adriano stepped closer, peering over my shoulder. "Let’s see what he’s been hiding."

Only my first lover ever whispered it in my ear, and I never told another living soul. Mr. V. watches my face. “Say it.” I shake my head. “Say it!” As the word leaves my mouth, carrying the weight of a secret I have kept buried for too long, his visible eye darkens with something that looks almost like grief. A payment envelope lands in my hands. Thicker than the last one. Beside it rests another sealed note. “Memorize the next pages,” he says. “She left instructions for how the fear should feel when the hunger takes over. You will need them.”

And she had no idea who it was. Her pulse hammered in her ears as she stared at the report. Her chair scraped against the floor as she stood abruptly, the laptop snapping shut in her trembling hands. She dialed the corporate secretary, her voice tight when he answered. “Explain this,” she demanded, pacing the length of her room. “Why wasn’t I informed? Why did I waste days begging for support when the shares were already gone?” She only asked it in her mind, unable to say it aloud. On the other end, the secretary hesitated. “Ms. Del Carmen… the transfers were confidential. I only received confirmation after the fact. I thought you knew.”

Seeing how much I liked him, Dad reached out to the Twilight pack to discuss an arranged marriage. But after I was abducted and my face temporarily disfigured in that fire, Easton had heartlessly broken off the engagement. It wasn't until I got engaged to Andre that Dad—hoping they'd value and cherish me—offered the Twilight pack a stream of trade deals. That was how the once insignificant Twilight pack rose to power so quickly. I knew the Twilight pack would neither give up those benefits easily, nor would they let me go without a fight. But I also wanted to make them regret everything they had done to hurt me.

"I need you to know that I chose this, us. It's just... adjusting to this change, Lily, it's not easy." His words hung in the air, a bridge spanning the chasm of unspoken fears. The truth was, I longed to believe him, to trust in the sincerity of his words. But the specter of my sister's presence, an unspoken presence in the room, cast a shadow on our budding connection. Sebastian sighed, a heavy exhale that seemed to carry the burden of unspoken sentiments. "I want this to work, Lily. I want us to build something together."

I shrug my shoulder and start to pull stuff out of the pantry. It doesn't take long, and we have a bunch of snack stuff for the kids, and the adults packed up. I am showing Tasha the way to the safe house. I am not sure why we call it a safe house. It is part of the packhouse. There is a hidden door in the hall. I open it and flip the light switch for the entrance and steps leading down. It leads to another door that locks from the inside. The only way it can be opened once locked is if someone from inside opens it. I push the door open, turn the lights on, and hear Tasha gasp. "This is huge."

"Mr. Kessler, a temporary system overload hardly dictates that you’ve won the night." Victor took a measured sip of his whiskey, his eyes dark and unreadable behind his spectacles as his gaze drifted from Dominic to Avery, who was kept firmly behind the man’s towering frame. "The thirty seconds have expired. The core dataset for the remaining White Oak samples has already been encrypted via military satellite and locked behind a global public cloud. I am the sole author of the decryption protocol." He set his glass down on the side table, leaning forward slightly.