But that night, she dreamed of empty houses and crying children, waking at 3 AM with the taste of ash in her mouth. The dream meant nothing except that her body chemistry was temporarily disrupted. She took a sleeping pill and forced herself back into unconsciousness, refusing to process what the nightmare meant about the person she'd become.
Success means nothing if you lose yourself along the way. The whisper was fainter now. Almost gone.
Age 24-25 - The Trap
Marcus Blacksilver's office overlooked the Thames like a throne room surveying conquered territory. Elizabeth sat across from him with the kind of calm that came from absolute certainty that she was the most intelligent person in any given room.
"The Romanian energy sector," he mused, flipping through the carefully crafted documents she'd brought. His eyes were sharp, practised, the eyes of someone who'd built a substantial investment firm through connections and ruthlessness. "Ambitious. The potential returns are... substantial."
He had no idea what she was about to do to him.
"My team has identified seventeen undervalued assets," Elizabeth said smoothly. "First-mover advantage in a market that's about to explode."
It was a lie. All of it. The assets she'd identified were financial black holes, investments that would drain resources for months before revealing their true worthlessness. But Marcus Blacksilver wouldn't know that until he'd already committed.
"Why bring this to us?" Marcus asked, setting down his pen with the comfortable authority of old money. "Your firm certainly has the capital to pursue this alone."
"Professional courtesy," Elizabeth replied, her smile never wavering. "Your reputation precedes you, Mr Blacksilver."
She was being strategic. She was being brilliant. She was being monstrous, but she couldn't quite see that yet.
Three months later, Marcus stood in the same office, face ashen as he stared at financial reports scattered across his desk like casualties of war. The Romanian investments had collapsed spectacularly, taking sixty percent of his client base with them.
"You knew." His voice was quiet, which made it worse than if he'd shouted. "You knew they were worthless."
Elizabeth didn't deny it. There was no point. "I told you the potential returns were substantial. I never said they were guaranteed."
"My daughter's university fund..."
"Is not my concern," Elizabeth said flatly. And meant it. She'd never met his daughter. His daughter was just a variable in the calculation, and an irrelevant one at that.
Marcus's hands trembled with rage. "You've destroyed everything I built. Twenty-five years of..."
"You chose to make it personal when you tried to poach my clients," Elizabeth interrupted coldly. "This is simply business."
She watched him absorb the finality of her response, watched him understand that he'd been playing with a predator and had lost. For a moment, something flickered in her own expression – a shadow of the girl who'd once listened to her mother's warnings about losing herself.
It passed quickly.
"Elizabeth," Marcus said finally, his voice hollow. "I hope it was worth it."
She didn't answer. But she did think about it later, briefly, before pushing the thought away. Yes, she decided. It had been worth it. Everything was worth it if it meant maintaining absolute dominance.
Age 25 - The Celebration
The Wynsor HQ rooftop gleamed under string lights, London's skyline spread out below like conquered territory. Elizabeth stood at the edge of the terrace, champagne untouched in her hand, watching her guests, investors, politicians, and rivals mingle in the space she'd created.
She was beautiful, she knew. Beautiful and brilliant and absolutely certain of her own superiority. She'd learnt to weaponise her appearance, to understand that others interpreted her physical presentation as confirmation of the power they already felt emanating from her.
"To the empire you're building," Sage said, appearing beside her with her own glass raised.
Sage Sterling, who didn't know her. Who saw the charming exterior and the brilliant strategic mind and thought she was falling in love with a person rather than a collection of calculated performances.
Elizabeth turned, taking in the warmth in Sage's brown eyes, the way she looked at Elizabeth with something that might have been admiration or might have been love. She was beginning to understand the difference between these two things. Love was rare. Admiration was easy.
"To the people who make it worth building," Elizabeth said smoothly, and watched Sage's pupils dilate with satisfaction.
They clinked glasses. For a moment, the weight of every cutthroat decision, every calculated betrayal, every necessary cruelty felt justified by the worship in Sage's eyes.
Ash appeared at her other side, and when their eyes met, something passed between them that wasn't admiration. Pity, maybe. Or fear.
His shadowed eyes held a sadness that made Elizabeth uncomfortable, so she looked away. Some part of her, the part she spent considerable energy suppressing, wanted him to be impressed rather than concerned. Ash was the only person besides her parents who'd known her before the transformation, and his disappointment stung in ways she refused to acknowledge.
"The board wants to discuss the Morrison Industries acquisition," he said quietly.
Elizabeth's stomach clenched. Morrison Industries. James Morrison's family business, the one his grandfather had built from nothing. The one that was struggling due to market changes and outdated practices. Another acquisition, another empire to dismantle, another set of human consequences to ignore.
"Not tonight," Elizabeth said sharply. "I'm not interested in discussing business."
But even as she said it, she was already mentally mapping the acquisition strategy. Morrison Industries wasn't a business opportunity; it was a problem waiting to be solved. And Elizabeth solved problems by destroying them.
Sage noticed Elizabeth's tension and placed a gentle hand on her wrist, a gesture of comfort that Elizabeth accepted without reciprocation. She allowed Sage the illusion that the gesture mattered, that her concern registered emotionally rather than strategically.
The party continued around them, but all Elizabeth could think about was the Morrison acquisition and the families she was about to displace. She could already see the calculation: which assets to liquidate, which employees to retain, which components to absorb into her existing operations.
She looked at Sage's radiant smile, at her siblings' cautious expressions, at the city stretched out below them, glittering with wealth and power.
"I built this," she thought, her fingers tracing the rim of her untouched champagne glass. I built all of this from nothing.
And she would continue building. She would continue acquiring. She would continue dominating every competitive space she entered because that was who Elizabeth Wynsor was, a force of nature, untethered by empathy or conscience, absolutely certain that the world existed to be shaped according to her specifications.
The whisper of her mother's voice had faded completely now. Sometimes, late at night, she tried to remember what it sounded like, but the memory slipped away like water through her fingers.
Success means nothing if you lose yourself along the way, the ghost of her mother's voice whispered, but Elizabeth had stopped listening long ago.
She had an empire to build. That was all that mattered.