Page 66 of Her Soul to Own

By hour four of day one, I’ve built a digital profile of every friend Lyra’s ever smiled at since the tenth grade. I’ve mapped out party guest lists from the last six months, RSVP databases, and even a suspiciously specific Pinterest board Harper made about “reclaiming your image” that might as well be titledHow to Publicly Humiliate a Vane in 5 Easy Steps.

By hour eight, I’ve started talking to myself. “No one organically hashtags ‘raw healing’ that many times in one week, Harper.”

At hour twelve, I switch to black coffee and pistachios. It’s not healthy, but if I’m going to unravel a conspiracy, I need to be both jittery and slightly malnourished for maximum paranoia.

Day two, I hit gold. Declan’s crypto wallet pings a purchase order linked to an ad targeting firm, small, dirty, and buried under layers of shell sites. It’s the same firm that placed ads in proximity to Lyra’s events over the past month, all with clickbait headlines like “The Truth About Influencer Privilege” and “How the 1% Co-Opts Trauma Culture.”

It’s subtle, designed to provoke discourse without naming her directly. But I see it. The timing and the placement.

They’re not just trying to sabotage her career. They’re trying to erode her reputation… slowly, casually, publicly. Like bleeding her out with a thousand paper cuts.

And the worst part is that it’s fucking working.

Comments have changed. Subtweets. Even some of her so-called followers are turning, though not with full force… just with hesitation, with doubt. And in her world, that’s lethal.

She doesn’t even know she’s bleeding. And I’m the only one watching her drown.

At hour thirty-six, I finally take a shower. Sort of. It’s more of a combat rinse. But it gets the job done. I don’t shave. I do, however, stare at my own bloodshot eyes in the mirror and mutter, “You look like someone who’s about to storm a congressional hearing.”

Charming.

Meanwhile, I imagine Lyra in the garden. Or sprawled on the sunroom couch. Maybe she’s reading. Maybe she’s sketching. Maybe she’s texting Harper because she still doesn’t know that the shark is circling her ankles with lipstick on its teeth. I don’t check the camera feed because that’ll only make it harder for me to stay away from her, especially considering she’s in the same house as me.

I could go to her. Iwantto go to her. But I know myself.

The second I touch her, all this will stop being about strategy and start being about desperation. The second she whispers my name like a secret, I’ll stop thinking like a soldier and start acting like a man in love.

And love? Love is reckless.

So I keep the door closed, keep the lights low, and keep feeding the monster I’ve unearthed, frame by frame, byte by byte.

I’ll see her again when I’m ready. When I have answers. When I know exactly how deep this rabbit hole goes.

Because until then? I’m not Silas, the man with the fucked-up past and a hard-on for the sinful girl.

I’m the puppeteer. And it’s time to start cutting strings.

It’s now the morning of day three. Technically, it’s still dark. The control room is lit by the glow from the screens and caffeine fumes. I haven’t slept more than a few hours total, but my eyes snap open the second the system pings an alert.

It’s a local media flag with the keywords:Lyra Vane.

My heart drops before I even open the file.

I pull up the article, and the headline screams louder than any siren:“Heiress in Decline: Lyra Vane’s Erratic Behavior Raises Eyebrows”

The subheader throws in buzzwords likeinstabilityandlegacy liabilityfor flair. The tone’s vague enough to avoid lawsuits but pointed enough to stab.

The byline is fake. I know that because I’m the source.

Well… technically, my ghost—a backdoor persona I built weeks ago to track disinformation trends. It wasn’t supposed to publish anything. It was supposed to bait and trap.

But someone used it, which means someone gotin.

I trace the upload path and follow the digital fingerprints—sloppy rerouting through a dead press agency in Boston, masked by three dummy ISPs and a bot farm in South Africa. It merely takes me seventeen minutes to reverse-engineer.

The order came from Mirage.Of course it did.

I slam the desk so hard that my coffee tips and spills across a pile of annotated profiles. It doesn’t matter. I already memorized them.

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