Page 64 of Her Soul to Own

Because people like Harper and Declan don’t go after the weak. They go after the shining ones. The ones that make them feel small in all the places they can’t admit.

I shift from the surveillance archive into their full digital profiles, breaching firewalls I shouldn’t be able to pass, except I always do.

Harper first.

Her official presence is polished to a high gloss. Travel posts, brand collabs, and podcast clips where she calls herself a “lifestyle disruptor.” All scripted to hell and back. But the backend tells a different story.

I start with financial records, personal and business, and find three different influencer contracts, all canceled within the last year. Also, one cosmetics partnership that never launched, and a steady drop in organic engagement despite a public claim of “500K real followers.”

Except they aren’t. I run a scan. Over half of her followers are purchased—Russian bot farms and third-world engagementpacks. I trace her digital activity and find the receipts. Literally. A shell account connected to a digital marketing firm in Jakarta. $6,200 transferred over three weeks for “social metrics enhancement.”

Desperate and completely not strategic.Thirsty.

Next, I cross-reference those dates with Lyra’s posts. The correlation stings. Every time Lyra goes viral, even for a night, Harper hemorrhages followers. It’s not a coincidence. It’s a pattern.

I pull her deleted messages from a now-dead Discord server she used last fall. There are screenshots of her ranting about how Lyra “gets everything without trying” and how she “plays the victim with designer shoes and her daddy’s money.”

So that’s the game. She doesn’t just resent Lyra. Shehatesher.

And it’s not just envy. It’s erasure. Harper wants Lyra’s platform and spotlight. And she’s been circling like a vulture, waiting for the right moment to rip it out from under her.

Declan’s next.

His file is even dirtier.

Crypto wallets, multiple handles traced back to black-hat marketing circles, a company called Mirage that specializes in reputation flips, blackmail, fake follower pumps, and character assassination campaigns dressed as “social strategy.”

He’s already used them. Three times. Once, to cover a sexual harassment accusation at Yale, which was quietly settled. Another, to tank a rival developer’s launch. And a third, still active, targeting a “female influencer with market saturation potential.” The description is vague, but the profile picture they used to brief the bots?

Lyra.

Fuck.

I clench my fist so hard that my knuckles pop.

This isn’t mere high-school jealousy anymore. This is industrial sabotage. Coordinated, funded, and tracked. And Lyra is the target. Because she’s too beautiful. Too magnetic. Too real in a world built on filters and manufactured charm.

She doesn’t play the game, and that makes her dangerous.

I save the files to a secure, encrypted drive, hidden under three decoy folders. Because if Evander sees this, he’ll shut it all down. And right now, I need time to build a counter-strategy. To hunt their sources and protect Lyra without making her feel the walls closing in.

Because the thing is, she’s not paranoid. The world really is trying to break her. And now I know who’s holding the hammer. Lyra’s not just at risk. She’scenter stagein a goddamn performance she doesn’t even know she’s starring in. And I’ve been too busy trying not to touch her to realize that the knives were already out.

I sit there staring at the paused screen. Lyra’s so bright in that footage, laughing and living, while the two people she calls friends move chess pieces behind her back. It’s almost poetic, in that cruel, venom-dripped way life likes to play itself out.

I want to shut it all down and pull her out of Willowridge entirely. I want to lock every door behind us, cut the strings, and eliminate the threats.

But I can’t. Because I was given one rule. One command that I’m not going to break.

Don’t touch her life. Not her circle. Not her parties. Not her town.

Evander made that clear from the moment he handed me the file with her name on it.

The office smelled like cigars and old leather. Evander’s scent, permanent and overbearing, was soaked into every corner of the Vane estate’s study. It was early fall. Rainclattered softly against the leaded glass windows, and the trees outside were still half-dead, clawing at the sky.

Evander sat behind his monolithic desk, his expression carved from stone. He slid a thick dossier across the surface toward me.

“She’s not to feel threatened,” he said.

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