Chapter 4

The days in my grandmother's town were quiet. The air was clean, the pace was slow. It was a healing balm on my raw nerves. Grandma Eleanor and I carefully placed my mother's cornerstone in her garden, nestled amongst the roses that were my mother's favorite. It looked right at home.

Life began to feel normal again. I helped my grandmother with her canning, read books on her porch, and took long walks down country lanes. It was on one of these walks that I met someone. His name was Ben, a local carpenter who was restoring an old barn down the road. He had kind eyes and sawdust in his hair. He didn't know who I was, or if he did, he didn't care. To him, I was just Ava, the woman from the city staying with her grandmother. It was refreshing. He made me laugh, a real, genuine laugh that I thought I'd lost forever.

The peace was shattered one evening by a phone call. An unknown number. I almost didn't answer, but curiosity got the better of me.

"Ava?"

The voice was instantly recognizable. Liam.

"What do you want?" I asked, my voice cold.

"I... I just wanted to see how you were doing. I heard you left the city."

"I'm fine. No thanks to you."

"Ava, you have to understand my position," he whined. "The pressure was immense. My career would have been over."

"So you threw me to the wolves to save yourself. I understand perfectly. Goodbye, Liam."

"Wait!" he said, a note of desperation in his voice. "Chloe... she's getting more and more famous. People are calling her a national treasure. She's starting her own foundation, a TV show... It's all built on you, Ava. On what they did to you."

"I'm aware," I said flatly. "Is there a point to this call?"

"I just... I think I made a mistake," he said.

"Yes, you did," I replied, and hung up. I blocked his number. He was a ghost from a past life, and I wanted the door to that life to remain firmly shut.

Ben could tell something was wrong when I got back from my walk. He didn't press, just handed me a glass of iced tea. "Tough phone call?"

"You could say that."

"Well," he said, sitting next to me on the porch swing. "Whoever it was, they're not here. And the sunset is."

His simple, steady presence was the complete opposite of Liam's shallow opportunism. I felt myself relaxing.

A few days later, Grandma Eleanor's friend, the P.I., sent his first report. It was a deep dive into Chloe's finances and connections. Nothing illegal, not yet. But it showed a pattern. Chloe had a knack for being in the right place at the right time, cozying up to people just before they had a stroke of good fortune, or bad. She was a vulture, feeding on opportunity.

Then, news from the city reached us. A major bridge, one I had flagged for urgent repairs a year ago, had to be shut down after a routine inspection found critical stress fractures. The city's infrastructure was starting to show the strain of neglect, a problem exacerbated by the fallout from the Olympia collapse, which had put all major projects on hold. The media began to murmur. Where were the experts? Why was nothing getting fixed? My name started to pop up again, this time in a different context. "The disgraced architect Ava Monroe was the last person to have a comprehensive overview of the city's structural weaknesses."

Chloe, ever the opportunist, saw her opening.

She scheduled a live television special. It was broadcast on every major network. She sat on a plush white couch, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief.

"My heart breaks for this city," she said, her voice thick with emotion. "The political squabbling, the delays... people are at risk. And it's all because of pride and anger."

She looked directly into the camera. "That is why I am publicly asking my dear stepsister, Ava, to come back. Please, Ava. I know you're hurting. I know you feel betrayed. But the city needs you. I need you. Put the past behind us. Let's work together to heal this city."

It was a masterstroke of manipulation. She was using moral blackmail on a national stage. If I refused, I was the petty, selfish one, holding a grudge while people's lives were at stake. If I accepted, I would be working under her shadow, the 'reformed villain' to her 'saintly hero'. She would take credit for my work, and my return would be seen as an admission of her power over me.

The public ate it up. The "ForGive Ava" hashtag started trending. They weren't forgiving me for the crime I never committed; they were forgiving me for my 'arrogance' and 'bitterness' in the face of Chloe's 'grace'.

I was furious. I paced back and forth in my grandmother's living room. "She's trying to trap me."

"Of course she is, dear," Grandma Eleanor said calmly, not looking up from her knitting. "That's what snakes do."

Just then, my phone buzzed. It was an encrypted message from a number I didn't recognize.

Ava. It's Miller. Don't respond to this. Found something. Your stepsister's personal assistant. Fired last week. Says Chloe had a keylogger program installed on your work computer. The IT guy who installed it was her ex-boyfriend. He owed her money. She had access to everything you wrote. Your reports, your emails, your private logs. That's how she knew about the flaw in the Olympia. That's how she stole your anonymous tip.

I stared at the screen, the words blurring together. My heart hammered in my chest.

A keylogger.

It was so simple. So low-tech and yet so devastatingly effective. It wasn't a miracle. It wasn't a psychic vision. It was digital theft.

Chloe hadn't just lied. She had committed a crime. A provable crime.

Detective Miller had found the crack in her foundation.

I looked at the television. Chloe was still on, looking beatific and forgiving. A wolf in sheep's clothing.

"Grandma," I said, my voice dangerously quiet. "Call your friend Mark. Tell him to find that fired assistant and that IT guy. Now."

I turned to Ben, who had been watching me with a worried expression. "I have to go back."

"Ava, are you sure? It's a lion's den."

"I know," I said, a slow, cold smile spreading across my face. "But this time, I'm not going in as a lamb. I'm going in as the lion tamer."

I picked up my phone and called the news station that was hosting Chloe's special.

"This is Ava Monroe," I said to the shocked producer who answered. "Put me on the air. I accept my sister's offer."