Chapter 1

Ava stepped off the transport jet, the air of her home city feeling foreign after eighteen months away. The mission was a success, a clean operation that had dismantled a global threat, but the cost was time, time stolen from her daughter. She walked through the sterile, white corridor of the private airfield, her mind already on Lily. She imagined the surprise on Lily' s face, the hug they would share, the weeks they would spend catching up.

Her handler, a man in a sharp suit, met her at the gate. He handed her a tablet.

"Welcome home, Ava. Everything is ready for your debriefing tomorrow. Tonight is yours."

Ava nodded, her eyes already scanning the news feed on the tablet' s screen. A headline from a major tech convention caught her eye. The name of the host company was familiar, too familiar. It was her son-in-law' s conglomerate.

Then she saw the photo.

It was Lily.

Her daughter was on a stage, but not as a keynote speaker. She was bound to a sleek, minimalist chair in the center of a brightly lit stage. Her face was pale, her expression a mixture of shock and utter devastation.

Ava' s breath caught in her throat. Her fingers tightened on the tablet, the metal frame groaning under the pressure.

The headline was brutal: "Tech Prodigy Lily Thorne Exposed as Fraud, Groundbreaking AI Code Auctioned Off by Estranged Husband Mark Vance."

Ava' s blood ran cold. She read the article, her mind racing to process the words. Public disgrace. Exploitation. Startup liquidation auction.

Mark, her estranged husband.

Ava remembered Mark. The ambitious, charming heir to the Vance tech empire. She had never fully trusted him, but Lily had loved him, had believed in his vision.

The article described how Mark stood on stage, accusing Lily of intellectual property theft. He claimed she had stolen the very code she had spent years developing. He called it a grand deception.

And standing beside him, her hand possessively on his arm, was a woman Ava didn't recognize. The caption identified her as Chloe, a social media influencer, Mark' s new "fiancée."

Ava' s knuckles were white. She kept scrolling, her heart pounding against her ribs with a force that was almost painful.

The worst part was Mark' s announcement. He sneered at the camera, his handsome face twisted with a cruel satisfaction. He declared that after the fragmented code was sold off to the highest bidders, Lily would be finished. Blacklisted. He painted a grim picture of her future, one of menial jobs and constant public humiliation, a punishment for the crime of "deceiving" him and his family.

"A life of shame is what she deserves," Mark had said, his voice dripping with venom.

The tablet in Ava' s hands suddenly went dark, its screen shattered into a spiderweb of cracks. The handler took a half-step back, his professional composure faltering at the sight of her face.

A low, guttural sound escaped Ava' s lips. It was a sound of pure, unrestrained fury.

The air around her seemed to shimmer, the temperature in the corridor dropping several degrees. The handler felt a prickling sensation on his skin, a raw, primal fear that his training had never prepared him for. He saw the look in Ava' s eyes, a look he had only seen once before, in the heart of a war zone right before she had single-handedly taken down an entire enemy compound.

It was the look of a predator.

"Get me a car," Ava' s voice was unnaturally calm, a stark contrast to the rage burning in her eyes. "Now."

"Ava, your debriefing..."

"The mission isn' t over," she said, her gaze fixed on something far beyond him. "It just began."

She didn' t wait for an answer. She walked past him, her stride purposeful and deadly. The shattered tablet fell from her grip and clattered onto the polished floor.

The convention hall was a spectacle of corporate excess. Glitzy displays, flashing lights, and the low hum of thousands of conversations filled the cavernous space. On the main stage, the scene was exactly as the news had reported, only worse in person.

Lily was a prisoner in the spotlight. Her wrists and ankles were secured to the chair by what looked like glowing cuffs. Her groundbreaking code, her life' s work, was being projected onto massive screens behind her, broken down into data blocks, each with a starting bid.

The auctioneer, a slick man named Jake, was warming up the crowd.

"Ladies and gentlemen, what we have here is a unique opportunity! To own a piece of the future, salvaged from the ashes of deceit!"

The crowd, a sea of wealthy investors and tech executives, laughed and cheered. They saw a fallen star, a piece of gossip, a chance to profit from someone else' s ruin.

Mark stood like a king, soaking in the attention. He gestured grandly at Lily.

"She fooled us all, but the Vance Corporation stands for integrity! We are liquidating these stolen assets to recoup our losses and to send a message to the entire industry."

Chloe, his new fiancée, clung to his arm, smiling for the cameras, a perfect picture of vapid triumph.

Lily looked up, her eyes scanning the crowd, a desperate, silent plea for help. She saw only vultures, their faces alight with greed and morbid curiosity.

Then, at the back of the hall, a commotion started.

A security guard went flying, crashing through a promotional kiosk. Then another. People screamed and scrambled out of the way as a path cleared through the dense crowd.

Ava walked through the chaos as if it were a minor inconvenience. Her face was a mask of cold fury. Her eyes were locked on the stage, on Mark, on the man who was destroying her daughter.

Mark' s smile faltered. He didn' t recognize Ava at first, but he felt the shift in the room' s atmosphere. The air grew heavy, charged with a palpable sense of danger.

Ava reached the foot of the stage. She looked up, first at Mark, then at the auctioneer, and finally, at Lily.

Her daughter' s eyes widened, a flicker of disbelief and then a wave of overwhelming relief washing over her broken expression.

"Mom?" Lily' s voice was a choked whisper.

Ava' s expression softened for a fraction of a second as she looked at her daughter. Then, her gaze snapped back to Mark, and the cold fury returned, intensified.

The convention hall, once filled with the buzz of excitement, fell into a stunned silence.

The auction was over. The reckoning was about to begin.