Chapter 3 3

Giselle threw her arm up to shield her eyes, squinting against the piercing glare. She thought it was a truck, maybe a delivery driver who would splash her with more mud.

But the vehicle didn't pass. It slowed to a purring halt right in front of her.

It was a Rolls Royce Phantom. Extended wheelbase. Jet black. The hood ornament, the Spirit of Ecstasy, gleamed under the streetlights, but unlike the ostentatious Villarreal fleet, this car bore no flags, no crests. It was a ghost in the night, radiating silent, terrifying power.

Behind it, a second car stopped. Then a third. A fourth. It was a motorcade fit for a head of state.

The rear door of the first car flew open before the chauffeur could even get there. A man in a grey suit sprinted out into the rain. He didn't care about his Italian leather shoes sinking into the mud.

"Giselle!"

It was her father. Or the man she had only seen in blurry, recovering memories.

He reached her in two strides and pulled her into a crushing embrace. He smelled of old tobacco and comfort. "I found you. My god, we found you."

A woman followed him, sobbing openly. Her mother. She wrapped her arms around both of them, sandwiching Giselle in warmth. "My baby. My sweet girl."

Giselle stood frozen, the rain matting her hair to her skull, mud streaked across her cheek. She was too shocked to cry.

Then, the doors of the second car opened.

Three men stepped out. Tall. Imposing. They moved with a predatory grace that screamed power.

Kordell Hines. The eldest. He took one look at Giselle-shivering, wet, broken-and his face darkened with a rage that could burn cities. He took off his cashmere trench coat and draped it over her shoulders. It was heavy and warm.

"Who did this?" he asked, his voice low and dangerous. He looked toward the Villarreal gates.

"Let's get her inside," the second brother, Silas, said. He walked over to her broken suitcase. He looked at it with disdain, then kicked it aside. "Leave it. You don't need garbage anymore."

The third brother, the youngest, Asher, stepped up. He pulled a silk handkerchief from his pocket and gently dabbed the mud from her forehead. His eyes were red-rimmed. "We have a penthouse ready for you in Coast City. Or the estate in the Hamptons. Wherever you want to go, Elle."

Elle. The nickname from a childhood she had almost forgotten.

"Let's go home," her father said, guiding her toward the open door of the Rolls Royce.

Giselle climbed into the back seat. It was like entering a different world. The air was climate-controlled to a perfect seventy-two degrees. The seats were softer than her bed at the manor.

Her mother sat beside her, gripping her hand so tight her rings dug into Giselle's skin. She handed her a thermos of hot cocoa.

"We have the best doctors on standby," Silas said from the jump seat. "We're going to fix whatever they broke."

Kordell handed her a leather folder. "This is just the start," he said. "Ten percent of Hines Global. It's in your name. Effective immediately."

Giselle looked down at the papers. The numbers were staggering. In the span of five minutes, she had gone from destitute to a billionaire.

"Why..." her voice cracked. "Why now?"

"We never stopped looking," her father said, his voice breaking. "The Woods family... they hid you well. But we found the discrepancy in the records. We came as fast as we could."

As the convoy began to move, pulling away from the curb, Giselle looked out the tinted back window.

Through the rain, she saw the imposing silhouette of the Villarreal manor. It looked like a prison now. A cold, stone mausoleum.

Inside that house, Joseph was probably pouring himself a drink, relieved to be rid of the "fraud." He had no idea. He thought he had thrown out trash, but he had just declared war on an empire.

Back in the manor, Joseph stood by the window. He saw the red taillights of the convoy fade into the mist.

"Sir," Kieran, his assistant, entered the room. "We've lost her."

Joseph frowned, turning around. "What do you mean?"

"I tried to track her phone. I tried to check the train stations, the bus depots. Nothing. Her signal just... vanished. It's like she ceased to exist the moment she stepped out the gate."

Joseph swirled the amber liquid in his glass. "She's hiding," he muttered. "She'll turn up in some cheap motel in a few days when she needs money."

But a knot of unease tightened in his stomach. He remembered the look in her eyes before she left. It wasn't the look of a defeated woman. It was the look of someone who had nothing left to lose. And that convoy... he hadn't seen the logos, but the precision of those cars, the way they moved in formation-that wasn't a taxi service. That was extraction.

In the Rolls Royce, Giselle took a sip of the cocoa. The warmth spread through her chest. She leaned her head on her mother's shoulder.

The girl who cried in the mud was gone.