Seraphina
(Past)
The first rule of a clean strike was silence.
Seraphina learned that long before she learned how to smile at men like Lucien and let them believe she was impressed. Silence meant no witnesses, no patterns, no emotional fingerprints. Silence meant that when the blade finally fell, no one would know who had lifted it.
She sat alone in the dim glow of her laptop, the city breathing faintly through the cracked window behind her. Midnight had passed. The world was asleep. That was how she preferred it—people were careless when they thought nothing was watching.
On the screen were files she had spent months assembling. Not stolen in one dramatic sweep. That would have been stupid. Instead, she had taken them the way ants dismantled a fallen giant—slowly, patiently, piece by piece.
Audio recordings mislabeled as harmless meeting notes. Expense reports that didn't align with approved budgets. Internal emails that contradicted public statements. Private messages Lucien never imagined would survive beyond his phone.
Misconduct didn't always look like evil. Sometimes it looked like confidence unchecked.
She scrolled, reading through everything one last time—not to admire her work, but to make sure it was perfect. There could be no gaps. No inconsistencies. Nothing Adrian could use to follow the trail back to her.
Adrian was dangerous not because he was cruel, but because he was thorough.
She had accounted for that.
The files had already been scrubbed of metadata. Each document passed through multiple hands she had never met—encrypted relays, foreign servers, borrowed identities that would dissolve within hours. The leak would appear organic, almost accidental. Like a whistleblower acting out of guilt, not strategy.
Seraphina allowed herself a single breath.
This wasn't revenge. Revenge was loud. This was leverage.
She scheduled the release for 6:47 a.m.—early enough to catch journalists before their editorial meetings, late enough that Lucien would already be awake, checking his phone like a man who believed himself untouchable.
Then she clicked send.
The screen didn't change. No alarms. No confirmation fireworks. Just quiet.
She closed the laptop and leaned back, listening to the hum of the city. Somewhere across town, Lucien was still powerful. Somewhere else, Adrian still believed he controlled the board.
They just didn't know the first piece had moved.
----
The backlash arrived faster than she expected.
By noon, Lucien's name was trending—not with admiration, but with questions. Screenshots spread like oil across water, each one leaving a stain. Headlines hedged at first—Allegations Surface, Sources Question Conduct—but restraint never survived the second wave.
Seraphina watched it unfold from a café three blocks away from her apartment, seated by the window like any other woman killing time. Her phone rested face-down on the table, vibrating every few seconds.
She didn't touch it.
The television behind the counter played muted news footage. Lucien's photograph appeared again and again, always the same composed expression, always the same expensive suit. The contrast between his image and the words beneath it grew sharper by the minute.
"Unbelievable," someone muttered at the next table.
Seraphina stirred her coffee, unfazed.
When she finally turned her phone over, the screen was chaos.
Messages from unknown numbers. News alerts stacking over each other. A single text from an encrypted contact she barely used:
It's everywhere.
Good, she thought. It was supposed to be.
She skimmed the reactions, not lingering on outrage or praise. Public emotion was volatile and useless. What mattered were the responses from power.
Lucien's office had released a statement—short, defensive, poorly timed. Adrian hadn't said a word. That silence told her more than any denial could.
He was tracing.
Let him try.
Seraphina had anticipated this moment too. The release wasn't a dump; it was a taste. Enough proof to ignite suspicion, not enough to conclude guilt. It forced Lucien into reaction mode and Adrian into containment.
Both men hated being cornered.
She paid for her coffee and left before anyone could remember her face.
---
By evening, the city felt different.
Not louder—tenser. As if everyone had leaned forward at the same time. Seraphina walked through it calmly, her pace unhurried. She wasn't running from anything. That was the advantage of planning ahead.
At home, she finally allowed herself to sit.
She opened a second laptop—one that had never touched the files—and monitored the ripple effects. Internal sources were panicking. Board members were demanding explanations. Sponsors were "reviewing their relationships."
Lucien's name was being spoken in rooms he was no longer invited into.
Still, she waited.
The true test wasn't whether the strike landed. It was whether it held.
Her phone rang.
Unknown number.
She didn't answer.
A minute later, a message appeared instead.
You've made things complicated.
She smiled faintly. Adrian, then.
She typed nothing back.
Power didn't announce itself. It let others feel it first.
Another message followed.
This doesn't protect you.
Seraphina finally responded, her words measured.
I'm not asking for protection.
Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.
She closed the phone before he could send anything else.
Leverage worked best when the other side didn't know its limits.
---
That night, alone in the quiet, Seraphina reviewed what she had learned.
Lucien was vulnerable—more than she'd anticipated. His misconduct wasn't an isolated flaw; it was a pattern. That meant fear would spread quickly among those who had benefited from his silence.
Adrian was cautious. He hadn't lashed out. He hadn't accused. That meant he was calculating risk versus reward.
Good.
She didn't want him reckless yet.
The first strike wasn't meant to destroy. It was meant to measure resistance. To see who moved, who froze, who reached for allies. Every reaction was data.
She opened a fresh document and began making notes—not about the past, but about what came next.
Names surfaced. Connections sharpened. Weak points revealed themselves like cracks under pressure.
Seraphina paused, fingers hovering over the keyboard.
For the first time since she began, she felt something unfamiliar.
Not fear.
Control.
The world hadn't ended. She hadn't been exposed. Instead, the structure she'd been studying for so long had shifted—just enough to prove it could be moved.
She closed the document and shut down the laptop.
Tomorrow, she would decide how hard to pull.
For now, it was enough to know this:
They were watching the fire.
They still hadn't seen the match in her hand.