Chapter 2 2

Sienna's apartment in Brooklyn was the size of Edlyn's old walk-in closet, but it was the only place that had ever felt like a true sanctuary.

She sat on Sienna's lumpy sofa, clutching a mug of lukewarm tea. The signed contract lay on the coffee table, a stark white rectangle that felt like a bomb.

"You did what?" Sienna breathed, her eyes wide. She'd been Edlyn's friend since before the world fell apart, the only person who knew the full story. "Edlyn, he's Camden Benjamin. They call him the 'Titan of Wall Street.' He doesn't make deals; he executes takeovers. You just sold yourself."

"I bought a weapon," Edlyn whispered, her voice raspy from disuse. It hurt to speak, a physical manifestation of the trauma that had silenced her three years ago.

"What weapon?"

Edlyn opened her laptop. It was the only thing of value she'd managed to keep. She logged into a secure cloud server, the one she had built after she first grew suspicious of her uncle.

Rows of spreadsheets filled the screen. Red numbers.

"The gallery's books," she said, her voice gaining a fragile strength. "I've been copying them for a year. She pointed to a column. "Look at this transfer. Three days before my parents' car accident."

Sienna squinted. "Two million dollars to... 'Blue Heron Holdings'? In the Caymans?"

"It's a shell company," Edlyn said. "My father found out Marcus was siphoning money. He was going to confront him."

"And then his brakes failed," Sienna whispered. She looked at Edlyn, horror dawning in her eyes. "Edlyn... you don't think..."

"The police said it was black ice," Edlyn said, her voice flat. "It was forty degrees that night."

For three years, she'd been trapped. Trapped by grief, by Julian's cloying manipulation that she mistook for kindness, and by the selective mutism that came after the crash. The stress of it all made words feel like swallowing glass. She had the evidence of her uncle's crime, but no power to use it.

Suddenly, a warning box popped up on her screen.

UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS ATTEMPT DETECTED.

"Shit," she hissed, slamming the laptop shut and severing the Wi-Fi connection. "Marcus is trying to wipe my email remotely."

"You need a lawyer," Sienna said. "Like, a shark. A killer."

"I just bought one," Edlyn said, nodding at the contract. Her phone, which she had kept on silent, buzzed on the cushion beside her. She picked it up.

It was a text from Julian.

An image loaded. It was her mother's diamond brooch, dangling precariously over his balcony railing, thirty stories up.

Come see me tomorrow. Or gravity takes over.

Edlyn threw the phone across the room. It bounced off the wall.

"He's going to destroy it," she choked out. "It's the only thing I have left of her."

She needed leverage. She needed power. And she needed it now.

The contract on the table wasn't just a shield anymore. It was a sword.

She picked up her phone and dialed the number on the business card Camden's assistant had given her.

"This is Edlyn Harding," she said, her voice steadier now, fueled by cold fury. "Tell Mr. Benjamin we have a change of plans. The timeline is moving up. We're going to war tomorrow."