Page 81 of Her Soul to Own

But they’re not finished yet. No. This is just the beginning.

I slam my fist on the desk, rage coursing through my veins. I can feel the walls closing in. I know what I have to do. I know how I have to play this.

But I need more. I need to know everything about Declan. Everything about his connections. I need to go deeper.

I pick up my phone and dial.

“Noah,” I say when he picks up. His voice is gruff, but there’s familiarity there, a history of trust. He knows exactly what I need.

“I need you to pull everything you can on Declan Pierce. I need to know every fucking detail about his life, his family, and his contacts. Everything. And I need it now.”

There’s a pause on the other end. Then, Noah’s voice comes through, calm and steady. “You got it, Silas. You want me to dig deep?”

“Do it,” I say. “Leave no stone unturned. Get me everything. I’ll be ready for whatever’s next.”

“I’m on it.”

I hang up, my mind already working and plotting my next move. I won’t stop until I’ve destroyed everyone involved in this. I’ll burn everything down to the ground if that’s what it takes.

But first, I need to wait for Noah. I need to know everything about Declan Pierce, and when I do, I’ll take him down.

I stare at the screens, my heart still pounding with the residual heat of that call with Noah. He’s mobilizing. Good. But I can’t sit still. Not while Lyra’s image is still being dragged through the digital dirt.

She’s asleep upstairs, finally, curled up like she’s trying to disappear into the mattress. Her phone stays next to me on the desk like a cursed relic. I’ve silenced the notifications, but the messages keep coming, DMs, comments, and tags. The kind of noise meant to gut a person’s soul pixel by pixel.

I crack my knuckles. Time to go dark-ops on these motherfuckers.

One perk of those long-ass nights in military recon? They taught me how to do more than just kill in the field. A cybersecurity course they forced on us before our deployment in Djibouti taught me how to bypass firewalls, trace IPs, and even write basic worms if I need them.

I boot up my old laptop. It’s ancient-looking but armored to the teeth. There’s no tracking software and no Bluetooth. It’s a relic of my paranoia, and tonight, it earns its keep.

I connect to the hardline, fire up Kali Linux, and start sifting through repost chains. There’s a pattern, like breadcrumbs left by a cocky bastard who thinks he’s smarter than the rest.

First domain is a .ru registry, buried under ten redirectors and a fake art portfolio. I smile bitterly. “Cute.”

I isolate the backend server, inject a logic bomb, and watch the system stutter, then flatline. Site gone. One down.

I log every admin account, scrape the emails, and cross-reference with my side database. Ten of them. All with American VPN pings. Two trace back to a university in Florida. Idiots using campus Wi-Fi to jack off to stolen sex tapes.

I spoof a cease-and-desist letter from a federal agent and send it to the university IT department with attachments. The kind that can end a scholarship and a future.

“Congratulations,” I mutter. “Your free ride’s over.”

The next server’s worse as it’s part of a larger content farm. It’s not porn-focused but full of gossip, headlines, and false news with clickbait banners like “SEE THE SCANDAL THAT BROKE THE INTERNET” and “EXCLUSIVE: Billionaire Heiress Caught on Camera.”

I pull their WHOIS data and locate the owner. It belongs to a scumbag named Vincent Vega. It’s his real name, surprisingly. He works out of a rented office in Scottsdale. I dig into his profile and find six prior lawsuits for defamation. All settled. But never learned.

I call the number listed under his LLC, and he answers with a bored, “Yeah?”

“You don’t know me,” I say, my voice low and level, “but you’ll remember this. Take the video down. All of it. Every post. Every trace. Or your kid’s private school gets an anonymous tip about daddy’s second business. The one you keep off your taxes.”

“You threatening me, man?”

“No. Just giving you a chance to avoid what comes next,” I say straight to the point.

Click. I hang up.

Five minutes later, the site goes dark.

---