The encrypted phone's interface was sleek, devoid of branding—just a single app glowing in the centre: a vault icon, pulsing gently as though it recognized her readiness.
Emily tapped it.
Immediately, a secure message appeared.
"Welcome. This is your threshold."
Below it, a prompt: Enter codeword.
She hesitated. Then typed a word only her mother used, whispered in lullabies and warnings alike.
"Wolfsbane."
The screen blinked. Then unlocked.
Files appeared—layered, coded, some marked with red flags.
Alexander had given her a key. What she found beyond it was darker than she expected.
The documents unravelled a network of assets, blackmail files, and debt markers—names of powerful individuals tethered to the Ashthorne family not through loyalty, but through leverage. Politicians, CEOs, judges.
But in a locked section labelled Project VESTA, she found something worse.
Her name.
Next to it, her mother's. Her father's. And Everett Langston's—crossed out in red.
Each name is linked to a separate ledger. Blood debts. Buried secrets. And beneath them, coordinates.
One set matched the Serpent's Tail.
Another… the Knight estate.
—
Emily barely had time to process it when her door opened without warning.
Alexander.
He froze when he saw the laptop open, her face pale, the phone in her hand.
"You looked," he said quietly.
"I had to."
He closed the door behind him. "And now you know."
"Know what?" she demanded, rising. "That my family was part of a ledger? A project? That my uncle isn't dead but erased?"
Alexander moved slowly, like someone approaching a storm.
"That ledger was created long before either of us had a choice. Your mother tried to destroy it. Your father tried to hide it."
"And you?" she asked bitterly.
"I inherited it," he said.
Silence expanded like thunder.
Emily's voice trembled. "So all of this—the marriage, the alliance, the masquerade—it's part of some… generational chess game?"
Alexander looked pained. "It started that way. But it changed."
She stepped back. "When?"
"When you stopped being a pawn."
—
Later, in the underground archives of the Knight estate—where marble met steel and history was stored beneath floorboards—Emily followed coordinates to a sealed vault.
Inside was an old leather book. Its pages are brittle. Ink faded.
But one entry stood clear:
Everett Langston: defected. Presumed threat. Locate and neutralize.
And beneath it:
Daughter of Rhea Langston: unknowingly carries the key.
Emily's hands shook.
She carried something they wanted. Something her mother died to protect.
Not just knowledge. A key.
To what?
To undo them? Or to finish what was started?
She didn't know.
But she knew she couldn't turn back.
Outside the archive, Alexander waited.
"No more lies," she said.
He nodded. "Then no more masks."
And for the first time, he opened the vault further—to show her where the real war began