Page 133 of Her Soul to Own

I never answered. But I know he’s watching.

And now I know exactly what he’s doing. He’s buying time. As Zara said, he’s not retreating. He’s fortifying. Desperate and cornered, but still dangerous.

By the sixth day, the journalist calls me directly. “We’ve uncovered enough to build the full timeline,” she says breathlessly. “Your mother’s murder was orchestrated perfectly. Every breadcrumb you gave me is corroborated. The Cayman transfers, the private jet logs. Even the fixer your father contracted weeks before your mother died. Lyra, it’s airtight.”

I internally scream, but I don’t cry. I won’t give him that power anymore.

He taught me to control my emotions. But what he didn’t realize, what none of them realized, was that he was building his own assassin.

I hang up and walk slowly back into the war room, where Silas, Noah, Zara, and Ms. Keene wait for me.

“It’s time,” I say, my voice sharp and steady. “We bring it all down.”

Silas steps closer, and his hand closes gently around mine. “And we don’t stop,” he says softly, “until nothing’s left standing.”

I nod.

Because this is no longer survival. This is demolition.

I can almost hear my father’s voice in my head, calm, controlled, and threatening beneath the velvet.

If I can’t control her, I’ll destroy her.

But not this time. Not ever again.

The storm finally begins to settle outside as the rain slows to a steady rhythm against the glass. The room quiets too, with everyone working, but uncertainty lingers thick in the air like smoke that refuses to clear.

I gently pull away from Silas and walk back toward my suite. The long corridor feels like a tunnel tonight, one I’ve walked down countless times as a daughter, as his pawn.

But tonight, I walk it as something else entirely.

The doors to my private suite close behind me with a final, satisfying click, sealing me off from the room and the enormity of it all, just for this moment.

I step in front of the full-length mirror. And I see her. The woman staring back isn’t the girl my father tried to shape.

She isn’t the daughter who flinched at his ruthless stares or swallowed her rage in exchange for approval. She’s the consequence of every choice he made.

Flawless. Regal. Terrifying. A queen of ashes.

Behind me, my laptop screen glows, another incoming flood of headlines stacking like dominoes, ready to fall.

HEIRESS VERSUS TYCOON: INSIDE THE CIVIL WAR OF THE VANE DYNASTY

The entire world is watching.

I don’t flinch. Instead, I smile.

“Let the world watch me set my father on fire.”

Chapter 35 – Silas – The House Bleeds

The estate is locked down tighter than a goddamn military base, but something about the stillness tonight makes my skin crawl. It’s too quiet. And quiet is never safe. I sit in the surveillance control room, which, let’s be honest, I basically converted into my personal panic station three weeks ago, and watch a grid of camera feeds flicker across twelve screens. Every hallway, every gate, every private access tunnel. The estate’s perimeter sensors pulse in rhythmic lines of green. Textbook secure. Which means it’s exactly when shit goes sideways.

I lean back, rubbing a hand over my jaw and scanning the feeds again. Nothing’s out of place. But there’s a twitch, a subtle movement in one of the west wing cameras. Just for a breath. A glitch? A signal hiccup? Yeah, right. There’s no such thing as coincidence in a place built on control. I narrow my eyes, isolating the feed and looping it back frame-by-frame. The camera jumps, freezes for half a second, and resumes like nothing happened. But I saw it. A shadow. A movement that didn’t belong. My gut knots.

The estate is supposed to be empty except for my crew and the one person I let stay, Santiago, the chef. Most of the staff were dismissed weeks ago. Hell, convincing them to leave wasn’t easy. Too many of them are loyal to Evander’s money, too many are terrified of pissing off the wrong name. I flash back to the conversation with the chef, Santiago, the night we shut the place down.

“Mr. Creed,” Santiago said with his arms crossed as he stood stubbornly in the main kitchen. The man’s in his sixties, his face weathered, but his posture still sharp like a soldier.

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