Page 125 of Her Soul to Own

Inside, the room breathes cold, and servers whirr in quiet unity. The lights are dim and sterile blue, casting everything in the kind of glow that makes you think of morgues and confessionals. Cables snake across the floor like arteries.

One rack is louder than the others. That’s the one I want.

I plug in the drive. It boots instantly, something Noah and I pre-loaded with a custom backdoor. It’s deep dive architecture, built to tear through encryption like tissue.

I bypass the public files and dive straight into the archives.

What I find isn’t just unsettling, it’s surgical.

Physically, Evander’s been gone for weeks, but his fingerprints are everywhere—surveillance logs updating every hour, backups uploading to offsite servers, and face recognition triggers labeled with specific threat levels.

One face has a Level 1 tag.Lyra.

I sit back for a second, staring at the designation. He has her flagged. His own daughter. Any entry or exit she makes is logged, reviewed, time-stamped, and categorized under threat tier.

It’s like a fucking prison, just with better wallpaper.

“Even when he disappears,” I mutter, my jaw tight, “he makes sure the eyes stay open.”

I keep digging.

Behind five layers of dummy directories, I hit a firewall labeled LEGAL, encrypted and timestamped with his signature key.

The encryption is beautiful. Elegant and dangerous.

I breach it anyway.

Inside, I find archived documents, contracts, and NDAs. I also find a couple of old redacted personnel files on ex-Vane operatives. Then, I hit the jackpot.

Trust Agreement: Lyra Vane Disbursement Clause

My stomach turns. I read it once. Then, I read it again.

The clause is precise and lethal. Every asset, estate holdings, stocks, offshore accounts, the goddamn foundation, held in trust until one condition is met:She must sign over the voting rights of all assets to a designated party.

Who the fuck does that?

Evander, apparently.

And the executor, the one who’s the designated party, is her father. Still pulling the strings from wherever he’s holed up.

My jaw locks, and my vision tunnels. I feel the heat creep up my neck, but it’s not anger, not even rage. This is something harsher and much deeper. It’s the kind of fury you get when you realize someone tried to write the ending to your story while you weren’t looking.

“He’s not protecting her,” I say out loud. “He’s owning her.”

This isn’t about legacy. It’s not about wealth or control. It’s about possession and domination. A final, inescapable leash. He’s turned her inheritance into a gilded cage and then wrapped the key in legalese.

I pace, my hands on my hips, trying to hold it in, but I can feel it building. The violent need to destroy everything thatcomes in her way. To shield her from the poison that man has laced through every part of her life.

I encrypt the file again and re-layer it with two-factor deadman’s switches. Then, I copy it.

Noah needs to see this. We’ll need space to dissect this because this isn’t just a breach. This is premeditated control and psychological warfare wrapped in legal contracts.

And I’m done playing fucking nice.

The door hisses behind me, the sound deceptively soft for what feels like a vault sealing shut. I’ve just breached the system and exposed the venom wrapped in legacy and paperwork. Evander’s legal chokehold on Lyra is now logged, saved, and copied. I should be walking out of here with Evander resting on my shoulders.

But instead, I freeze.

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