Chapter 2

I didn't look back. I walked out of the opulent hotel, my wedding dress a stark white beacon in the evening light. Marcus, ever loyal, followed without another question, quickly getting the car. He opened the door, and I slid into the back seat, the silk of the dress bunching uncomfortably around me.

He got in the driver's seat and looked at me through the rearview mirror. "Where to, Ma'am?"

"My mother's residence," I said.

The drive was silent. The city lights blurred past the window, a world of celebration I was no longer a part of. I felt no sadness, no heartbreak. Only a hollow, cold resolve. I had already mourned this loss in another life. This was not a tragedy; it was an opportunity.

My mother was waiting. She took one look at my face, at the wedding dress I still wore, and her expression hardened. She didn't ask what happened. She was a woman who understood strategy, who understood that sometimes the most powerful move is a tactical retreat.

"I've made a decision," I told her, standing in the middle of her spacious, quiet living room.

She nodded, her eyes full of a fierce, protective light. "Whatever you need."

"I'm accepting the offer," I said. "The one for the national security project. The remote facility."

It was a classified project I had been consulted on before my engagement, a high-level cybersecurity initiative. I had turned it down for David, for a life I now knew was a lie. My mother's connections had gotten me the initial offer; my skills had made them want me.

She didn't try to dissuade me. She simply walked over to her desk, picked up a secure phone, and made a call. "It's done," she said a few minutes later. "A transport will be ready in the morning. Your identity will be scrubbed. For all intents and purposes, Amelia, the runaway bride, will have vanished."

I nodded. "Thank you, Mom."

She came to me and gently touched my cheek. "He wasn't good enough for you, my girl. I never said it, but I always knew it." Her embrace was warm and strong, a safe harbor in the storm I had just unleashed.

The next five years passed in a blur of code, firewalls, and encrypted data streams. I was no longer Amelia, the socialite. I was 'Aegis', the anonymous architect of the nation's most advanced cyber-defense system. I lived and breathed the work. The remote facility was my sanctuary and my forge. I honed my skills, turning my mind into a weapon more potent than any rifle I had carried in the special forces.

I built a new life, a new identity, surrounded by the hum of servers and the quiet respect of the nation' s top intelligence operatives. I also built connections. Deep, powerful connections that reached into the highest echelons of government.

The world outside, the world of David and Bethany, faded into background noise. I knew they had married. I knew they had spun a tale of a flighty, unstable bride who had left a good man at the altar. They had used my disappearance to build a narrative of their own tragic romance, a story that strengthened their public image. I let them. I let them build their empire on a foundation of lies, knowing that the higher they climbed, the harder they would fall.

Sometimes, in the dead of night, the memories would return. The cold dungeon, the pain, the humiliation. It was no longer a source of terror but a focusing agent. It reminded me why I was there, what I was working toward. It was the fuel for the fire inside me, a fire I kept banked and controlled, waiting for the right moment to be unleashed.

That moment came in the form of an encrypted email.

It was an invitation to the Global Tech Summit, the most high-profile technology conference in the world. It wasn't an invitation for Amelia, the disgraced fiancée. It was a summons for Aegis, the keynote speaker on international cybersecurity.

The summit was being held in my old city.

And the main corporate sponsor was David' s company, OmniCorp.

I looked at the invitation on my screen. The time for hiding was over. The time for retreat had ended.

It was time to go home.