Page 154 of Her Soul to Own

“You’re looking at forty years, minimum,” one of the agents says flatly. “Unless you start talking.”

Declan swallows, and his jaw works like he’s chewing on the fact that he’s completely and irrevocably fucked.

And then, finally, he breaks.

“I take a deal,” he says, his voice cracking. “I’ll give you everything. Evander, Harper, the death certificate. All of it. I’ll testify.”

Coward. Fucking coward.

Silas is the one who delivers the update to me hours later, standing in my apartment with the same neutral face he always wears when the news is both expected and disgusting.

“He’s officially cooperating,” Silas says. “Full testimony. He flipped on Harper and your father.”

I don’t say a word. I don’t flinch.

I just nod.

Because this isn’t relief. This is just another piece falling exactly where I fucking planned for it to fall.

XXX

The burner phone lights up on the sleek marble table, its screen glowing like a venomous snake waiting to strike. Zara slides it toward me, her lips pressed into a tight, angry line.

“Harper,” she says, her voice clipped. “She finally crawled out of her hole.”

I don’t reach for it immediately. I let the venomous message sit there like a spoiled offering I have no intention of accepting. The light glistens as the text glows on the screen, bold, desperate, and pathetic.Walk away, Lyra. Drop the charges, or I’ll take you down with me,it says.

Attached to it is a file—footage she’s trying to sell as evidence. Fabricated deepfakes, chopped timelines, and spliced conversations taken out of context and stitched together like some goddamn Frankenstein creation. She’s playing the same tired game, like she actually believes this bullshit could still scare me.

“Jesus Christ,” Zara mutters under her breath, pacing behind me like a coiled spring. “She’s completely lost it.”

“No,” I say calmly, letting my fingers finally wrap around the burner, my voice like sharpened steel. “She hasn’t lost it yet. She still thinks she has a card to play.”

Harper’s panicking, and desperate people make sloppy moves. This? This is her last gasp.

“She still thinks I’m the scared girl she broke,” I whisper. “She doesn’t realize she fucking made me.”

Noah leans over and scans the phone with quick precision, his voice even but with that dangerous undercurrent he never quite hides when he says, “She routed it through three proxies. Cute. We’ll have her physical location in a few hours.”

Fiona doesn’t even look up from her laptop, already pulling up layers of Harper’s offshore shell companies and financial proxies. “We’ve got enough to bury her twice over,” she says. “You want full exposure or strategic slow bleed?”

“Both,” I answer without hesitation.

“Now you’re starting to sound like me,” Noah says with a grin.

Zara circles back around to face me. “We’re still waiting for Silas?”

I nod. “He’s tied up with the legal team. Securing everything for trial.”

Silas has been spending every minute digging his way through layers of my father’s old legal machinery—the rotten contracts, hidden clauses, forged trusts—preparing for the full-blown war that’s about to ignite in federal court. I trust him to handle that. And I trust myself to handle Harper.

I swipe through more of Harper’s threats, shaking my head at how fucking pathetic they are. Empty words from a woman whose entire world is collapsing beneath her stiletto heels.

“She’s cornered,” Zara says. “You want me to respond? I can serve her something nasty.”

“No,” I reply. “She wants me to flinch. But we don’t flinch. We bury her.”

Fiona pulls up the full network of Harper’s financials on the massive digital table, every connection lighting up like a spiderweb of rot. “Cayman accounts. Dubai laundering rings. Wire transfers disguised as consulting fees. Every dollar she thought was invisible… now visible.”

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