Chapter 7

The door to Damian's VIP suite slammed open.

A young man wearing a loud, floral silk shirt strolled into the room, tossing a micro-USB drive in the air and catching it. This was Kai Xiao, Damian's best friend and the top cybersecurity expert on the West Coast.

Kai looked at Damian, who was standing perfectly upright, adjusting his cuffs. Kai let out a low whistle. "Looks like your mysterious fairy godmother didn't just save your life, she cured your 'paralysis' too."

Damian shot him a lethal glare. He held out his hand. "Did you trace it?"

Kai dropped the smirk. He handed over the drive. "The call bounced through at least seven proxy servers before disappearing into the deepest trenches of the dark web."

Damian's eyes narrowed. A girl fresh out of a trailer park possessing that level of counter-surveillance tech? It was impossible. Someone else was pulling the strings.

"But," Kai added, tapping his temple, "I intercepted the audio packet. She was using a voice modulator. I stripped the filter."

Damian walked over to his laptop, shoved the drive into the port, and clicked the decrypted audio file.

The room filled with Aurora's true voice. It was cold, clear, and slightly lazy. "Our engagement is over..."

Damian's chest tightened. A deep, inexplicable irritation flared up in his gut. The sheer coldness and detachment in her tone felt like a physical grating against his nerves. He aggressively closed the media player, refusing to listen to another second of that arrogant, lazy drawl. This girl was nothing but a manipulative parasite.

He extracted the audio file and forwarded it directly to the Yates family elders. It was undeniable proof that the Lott family broke the pact first.

Kai watched him. "Ruthless. You just nuked the Lott family's only lifeline and blamed them for it."

Damian slammed the laptop shut. "They tried to play me. Now, put every single asset we have into finding the woman from the mountain."

Miles away, on the balcony of the guest house, Aurora's encrypted phone vibrated against her thigh.

She pulled it out. K. Stone had sent a highly classified intel dossier. The subject line read: Vera Mercer - Fatality Investigation Update.

The relaxed posture Aurora held instantly vanished. Her muscles coiled tight. A terrifying, murderous aura radiated from her body.

She opened the file. It was a grainy, restored traffic camera photo from ten years ago. The exact cliffside highway where her mother's car had been run off the road.

K. Stone's encrypted voice memo played in her earpiece. "Boss, we recovered the deleted footage. Ten minutes before your mother's crash, three black SUVs passed through that exact sector."

Aurora zoomed in on the image. Her eyes locked onto the license plate of the lead vehicle.

"Those vehicles," K. Stone's voice dropped, "were registered to a private security firm owned entirely by the Yates family."

Aurora's heart stopped. It felt like a physical hand had reached into her chest and crushed her lungs.

The Yates family. Damian Yates.

Her brain fired at lightspeed, connecting the dots. Her mother's bizarre death. The Lott family's refusal to investigate. The sudden, forced marriage to the Yates heir.

Aurora took a sharp breath, forcing the violent rage down into her stomach. "Keep digging," she ordered K. Stone, her voice vibrating with suppressed violence. "I want the names of the men in those cars."

She ended the call. She stared at the grey sky, a cruel, bloody smile forming on her lips. If the Yates family murdered her mother, breaking an engagement wasn't going to be enough. She was going to burn their entire empire to the ground.

BANG.

The heavy wooden door of the guest house was violently kicked open, the frame splintering.

Aurora shoved the phone into her pocket and spun around, her eyes still blazing with killing intent.

Eleanor Lott stood in the doorway, leaning heavily on her ruby-encrusted cane, her chest heaving with absolute fury. Behind her stood Aurora's uncles, Roger and Howard, flanked by a dozen massive estate bodyguards.

Eleanor raised her shaking hand. She was clutching the crumpled cancellation fax.

"You miserable bitch!" Eleanor shrieked, her voice cracking with hysteria. "What the hell did you do?!"