Chapter 5

Aubree pulled the heavy velvet curtains shut. The bedroom plunged into absolute darkness.

She unzipped the hidden compartment of her canvas bag and pulled out a dense, matte-black metal cube. She pressed her thumb against a smooth indentation on the side. The cube clicked. The metal plates shifted, sliding apart and locking into place. Within seconds, it transformed into a military-grade terminal. A small holographic projector hummed to life.

Aubree reached under her shirt collar. She pulled out a silver necklace with a biometric microchip embedded in the pendant. She snapped it into the terminal's port. A ghostly blue light illuminated her face, reflecting in her cold, unblinking eyes.

Her fingers hit the virtual keyboard. They moved in a blur, typing a sixty-four-character dynamic encryption key. The system bypassed the NSA's baseline firewalls in less than three seconds. She was in the Dark Web.

Lines of code and multi-million dollar bounty contracts cascaded down the screen. Aubree ignored them. She switched her routing protocol to the private frequency of Morpheus, the legendary chess AI controller.

A highly encrypted email popped up. It carried the digital signature of Ellery Avery-Sterling Avery's grandfather and the patriarch of the Avery empire.

Aubree opened it.

I've studied your last three matches against the European grandmasters. Your endgame strategy is unlike anything I've seen in forty years. I require a face-to-face match. Tomorrow night. Avery Manor. Come as my personal guest.

Aubree stared at the screen. She tilted her head slightly. Ellery Avery was known as a ruthless predator of Wall Street, but his private passion for chess was legendary among the elite. He had no idea Morpheus was an eighteen-year-old girl. And he certainly didn't know she was betrothed to his worthless grandson.

A faint, cold smile touched her lips. The gala would be the perfect stage to observe the Avery family from the inside.

She opened a new terminal window and hacked into the Hopkins family's internal schedule. The calendar showed that Kennedy and her stepmother were desperately pulling favors to secure an invitation to the same gala.

Her smile sharpened.

She typed a quick reply to Ellery. A single line of code confirming her attendance.

Then, she switched her digital mask. She logged into the server as Monarch, the apex hacker, and opened a secure chat with Corvus, a top-tier information broker.

*Pull the original NYPD crash reports from seven years ago. Eleanor Hopkins.*

Corvus replied instantly. *The physical archives were scrubbed three years ago. Someone burned the paper trail.*

Aubree's stomach tightened. The conspiracy surrounding her mother's death ran much deeper than a simple brake failure. Her fingers flew across the keys, activating a dormant Trojan horse virus she had planted inside the servers of New York's top financial institutions. The data mining began.

Suddenly, a red warning light flashed on the corner of her terminal. The motion sensor outside her bedroom door had been tripped.

Aubree slapped the top of the terminal. The metal plates collapsed instantly, folding back into a harmless black cube. She shoved it under the mattress. She glided across the room without making a sound, pressed her back against the wall beside the door, and stopped breathing.

The brass doorknob slowly turned. It hit the lock mechanism with a soft, metallic click. The person outside paused. Heavy, muffled footsteps slowly backed away and faded down the hall.

Aubree recognized the heavy tread. Gaye's personal bodyguard.

She let out a slow, silent breath. She walked to the bare mattress and lay down in the dark, her mind already calculating the exact strategy she would deploy at the Avery gala.