[SOVEREIGN TOWER - FLOOR 98]
Sierra was carving a trench in the marble.
Heels stabbing the floor like knives—click, drag, click, drag—each step a frantic metronome counting down to something irreversible. The strappy black stilettos she'd spent an hour choosing, the ones that turned her legs into weapons, now felt like shackles, clicking out her panic in sharp, brittle echoes through the cavernous penthouse.
Her phone was welded to her palm, knuckles white, screen burning her eyes.
Phei (Old Phone) - 53 Unanswered Calls
Fifty-three.
Every single one devoured by voicemail before the first ring. Not delayed. Not dropped. Instantly dead. Like the phone had been crushed under a boot or drowned in blood.
Her stomach lurched at the image.
Something was wrong.
Not the quiet kind of wrong. The kind that ended with body bags and hushed settlements and headlines that lasted one day before the Legacies buried them.
