Chapter 5

Farah turned away from the window. She walked quickly to the heavy walnut door and pressed her ear against the wood. She held her breath, listening until the sound of Brook's footsteps completely faded down the hallway.

She spun around and walked straight to his massive mahogany desk. She bypassed the locked computer tower and reached for the iPad resting flat on the leather blotter. The screen was still awake.

She picked it up. Her fingers moved rapidly across the glass, opening the cloud storage drive Brook shared with Chelsey.

The screen populated with dozens of folders. She tapped on the one labeled "City Hall Project." This was the massive architectural bid due next week.

She opened the master document. The title page loaded. The lead architect was listed as Chelsey Pitts. Farah's name was buried at the bottom of the acknowledgments page in tiny font.

Farah's eyes narrowed. A bitter, cold fury, separate from the grief, coiled in her gut. They hadn't just destroyed her family; they were actively erasing her, stealing her very identity as an architect. She tapped the select icon and highlighted every single raw CAD file and structural blueprint in the folder.

She hit the delete button. A warning prompt popped up. She hit confirm. She immediately navigated to the cloud's trash bin and permanently erased the files from the server.

She paused. Simply deleting the files wasn't enough. Chelsey would notice the empty folder immediately and could restore from a backup or demand the files be re-uploaded. Farah needed to buy time-real time-by making the folder look complete until the moment of the final presentation.

She opened her personal email on the iPad's browser. In the months before the Sterling Group collapsed, when the first inexplicable cash flow problems had surfaced, Farah had developed a quiet, almost paranoid habit. She had backed up every design proposal she touched to her private email-not the final polished versions, but the early drafts with her original watermark and timestamp embedded in the file metadata. She had done it without fully understanding why, a gut-level instinct that something was deeply wrong and that she might one day need proof of her own work.

Now, she navigated to those old emails. She found the City Hall Project's initial draft-the version she had roughed out months ago before Chelsey's team had stripped her name off it and refined the structural calculations. She downloaded the file, renamed it to match the exact title of the final design draft, and uploaded it to Chelsey's shared folder. Then she revoked the folder's shared editing permissions, locking everyone to view-only access.

The folder would look complete at a glance. Only when Chelsey opened the files for the final board presentation would she discover the version inside was a half-finished draft riddled with placeholder notes. By then, it would be too late to recover the originals or meet the submission deadline. It wasn't a hack. It was a trap built entirely from the paper trail of her own stolen work.

She was about to put the iPad down when a banner notification dropped down from the top of the screen. It was a calendar reminder.

The text read: 8:00 PM. Le Bernardin. Table for two. Livia Alcott.

Farah stared at the name. Livia Alcott. The Parisian heiress. Brook's college obsession who had always considered him beneath her until he built his empire.

Farah realized exactly what Brook was doing. His company was in the middle of a massive PR crisis, and his ego needed a stroke. He was going to flex his power to his old flame.

A cold, precise plan formed in Farah's mind.

She pulled her own phone from her pocket. She snapped a clear picture of the iPad screen showing the dinner reservation. She set the iPad back onto the leather blotter exactly where she found it.

She walked over to the sofa. She pulled a handful of tissues from the box on the coffee table, crumpled them up, and scattered them across the glass surface to make it look like she had been sitting there crying the entire time.

She walked to the door. She tried the handle. It turned easily from the inside. Brook's attempt to imprison her had been purely psychological-a lock designed to keep junior staff from wandering in, not to hold someone who was already inside. He had assumed fear would do the real work of keeping her in place. She opened it and stepped out. She dropped her head forward, letting her hair fall over her face, and walked toward the elevator with slow, defeated steps.

The secretaries at the front desks stopped typing. They stared at her, their eyes filled with a mixture of pity and quiet disgust.

Farah ignored them. She took the elevator down to the garage, got into her Porsche, and hit the lock button on the door panel.

She pulled out her phone and opened a heavily encrypted messaging app she had installed years ago and barely used. She created a new disposable account and typed a message to the anonymous tip email address for the editor of Page Six, New York's most vicious gossip column.

She typed a fast message: Le Bernardin. 8 PM. Brook Tyler and Livia Alcott.

She added one final sentence to the bottom of the email: The savior fiancé's late-night rendezvous.

At the end, she appended a note: "I'm using a secure channel to protect myself. Contact me here if you want more details before tonight-my handle is @SterlingGhost."

Her thumb hovered over the send button for two seconds. She pressed it.

The screen flashed a green checkmark. Farah let out a long, shaky breath, clearing the stale air from her lungs.

But she did not drive straight home. Instead, she pulled out of the Tyler Enterprise garage and headed crosstown toward Le Bernardin. She needed to scout the location, and she needed her car to be in position long before Brook arrived.

She circled the block twice before finding the perfect spot-a narrow street corner with a clear diagonal sightline to the restaurant's discreetly lit entrance. A large oak tree cast deep shadows over the curb, dark enough to swallow a black Porsche whole. She backed into the space, killed the engine, and studied the angles. From here, her dashboard camera's wide lens would capture every single person who walked through those doors.

She pulled out her phone and ordered a rideshare. Fifteen minutes later, a silver Toyota Camry with an Uber sticker on the windshield pulled up beside her. Farah locked the Porsche, slid into the backseat, and gave the driver her penthouse address.

When she walked into the penthouse forty minutes later, she went straight to the master closet. She pushed past the rows of modest, elegant dresses Brook preferred her to wear.

She pulled out a dress she hadn't worn in years. It was a blood-red, silk gown with a plunging V-neckline that left nothing to the imagination.

She sat down at her vanity mirror. She began applying her makeup, using sharp, dark lines to contour her face.

The woman in the mirror looked nothing like a broken victim. She looked like a predator. Tonight, she was going to serve herself up as bait.