Chapter 3

The old phone vibrated in my hand, a ghost from a past life. The screen was stark, a simple, encrypted interface I had designed myself. There was only one icon. I pressed it.

A login screen appeared. No logo, no name, just two fields: Username and Password.

My fingers trembled slightly as I typed.

Username: Athena.

The password flowed from muscle memory, a complex string of characters I had never allowed myself to forget. I hit 'Enter.'

For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the screen flooded with notifications. They poured in, a cascade of messages from a world I had shut out.

"ATHENA IS ONLINE."

"THE QUEEN IS BACK."

"Holy shit. Is it really you?"

"Where have you been? The Club has been chaos without you."

"A new game begins."

I scrolled through the messages, a cold sense of power returning to me. This was the real Player' s Club. Not David' s pathetic little forum for cheating husbands. This was the network I had built from the ground up in my twenties. A secret society of strategists, hackers, information brokers, and manipulators. We weren' t a club for petty infidelity. We were a club for people who wanted to master the art of influence, to bend the world to their will, to achieve their desires by understanding the hidden levers of human psychology.

I was Athena, the founder. The one who wrote the original code of conduct. The one they all looked to. I was a legend in this dark, hidden corner of the internet. They thought I had disappeared, a ghost in the machine. They had no idea I was living in the suburbs, packing school lunches and color-coordinating throw pillows.

My inner monologue was a torrent of memories I had suppressed for years. I remembered the thrill of it all. The intellectual challenge of dismantling a rival corporation for a client by turning their own executives against each other. The satisfaction of helping a woman escape an abusive marriage by systematically ruining her husband' s reputation until he had no power left. We weren' t heroes. We were pragmatists. We dealt in power, not morality.

And I was the best. My mind, which I had deliberately softened and turned to domestic matters, was now whirring back to life. The analytical pathways, the strategic thinking, the ruthless logic-it was all still there, just dormant.

I closed my eyes, remembering why I left. It was David. I met him at a corporate conference I was attending under a fake identity. He wasn't my target; he was just a charming, ambitious man who seemed different. He seemed genuine. He made me laugh. He talked about wanting a family, a real life, not this endless corporate climb.

For the first time, I wanted what he was offering. I was tired of the games, of the constant vigilance, of the emptiness that came with seeing everyone as a pawn. I wanted to believe in something simple. I wanted to be loved for who I was, not for what I could do.

So I made a choice. I faked my own digital death, wiped my identity as Athena, and walked away. I became Sarah Miller, corporate strategist turned devoted homemaker. I fell in love. I got married. I had Ethan. And for a while, I was happy. I truly believed I had escaped.

But my own rules were clear. The Club had a founding principle, a sort of self-imposed curse I had created to keep us all in check. You could leave the game, but only if you found something real. If the reality you chose turned out to be just another game, and you were the one being played, the curse was activated.

The only way to break it, to truly be free, was to return. You had to identify the player who betrayed you. You had to use the Club' s resources to dismantle their entire life. You had to beat them so thoroughly that they could never play again. It wasn' t just about revenge. It was about re-establishing the order of things. It was about proving that you were still the master.

David hadn' t just cheated on me. He had triggered the one clause that could bring Athena back from the dead. He had unwittingly declared himself a target in a game he didn' t even know existed. He thought he was playing checkers. I was about to remind him what it felt like to be a piece in a game of chess, right before the checkmate.

I typed a single message into the main channel, my first in eight years.

"Hello, children. Did you miss me?"

The response was instantaneous and explosive. The game was on.