The smoke from Room 402 curled around the hallway like a serpent, but the air felt even colder with the arrival of the woman standing by the elevator. Eva's breath hitched, her throat tightening in a spasm of pure, unadulterated shock. She stared at the woman—the same high cheekbones, the same icy blue Vanderbilt eyes. Eleanor. The sister Alexander had mourned for a decade.
"Eleanor?" Eva whispered, her voice a fragile sliver that threatened to snap. A nauseating wave of unreality washed over her. Every pillar of her life was crumbling; the dead were rising, and the living were monsters.
Alexander stood up slowly, shielding Eva with his body, though his movements were heavy with exhaustion and a deep, soul-crushing weariness. He didn't look surprised. Instead, his face settled into a mask of bitter, ancient resentment. He looked at his sister not with love, but with a lethal, quiet hatred.
"You should have stayed in the grave I dug for you, Eleanor," Alexander rasped, his voice dripping with dark, jagged venom.
Eleanor laughed, a sharp, melodic sound that carried a disturbing edge of insanity. She toyed with the voice modulator in her hand, her eyes flicking over Eva with a predatory, dismissive coldness.
"And miss the look on your precious bird's face when she realizes you're the one who built her cage?" Eleanor stepped forward, her heels clicking with a rhythmic, taunting precision. "He didn't save you from the crash, Eva. He orchestrated it. He needed a way to disappear so he could hunt his enemies without rules, and he needed you mourning him so no one would look for the truth. You were his perfect alibi. His perfect tragedy."
Eva felt a visceral, heart-stopping betrayal. She looked at the back of Alexander's head, her eyes burning with a cold, dry fire. The man who had just risked his life to pull her from an explosion was the same man who had plunged her into a year of suicidal grief. She felt a profound, icy detachment—the kind that comes when the heart simply cannot break any further.
"Is it true?" Eva's voice was no longer trembling. It was as sharp as the glass littering the floor.
Alexander didn't turn around. His silence was a heavy, suffocating confession. He stood rigid, his fists clenched so hard the blood from his palm dripped onto the carpet. He was a man trapped in his own web, paralyzed by a toxic mix of pride and devastating shame.
"I did it to end the war, Eva," he finally whispered, his voice vibrating with a desperate, hollow justification. "To make you the sole heir. To keep you out of the line of fire."
"You were the fire, Alexander!" Eva screamed, her voice echoing through the smoke-filled corridor. She felt a surge of sovereign, righteous rage. She wasn't a prize to be protected; she was a human being who had been erased.
Suddenly, Eleanor pulled a small, silver remote from her pocket. Her smile widened, revealing a manic, vengeful triumph. "The 'Key' you're holding, Eva? It's not for a vault. It's a trigger. It's the encryption key for the entire Vanderbilt server. One press, and every secret Alexander ever kept—every life he ruined to 'protect' you—goes public. The empire falls tonight."
Alexander moved with blurred, predatory speed, lunging toward Eleanor, but she was faster. She retreated back into the elevator, the doors sliding shut just as he slammed against them.
Eva stood in the middle of the hallway, the silver Key heavy in her hand. She looked at Alexander—this man-turned-monster—and then at the elevator where the past had disappeared. She felt a chilling sense of power. For the first time in years, she held the leash.
She turned away from him and began to walk toward the emergency stairs, her footsteps steady and cold.
"Eva, wait!" Alexander called out, his voice sounding small, fractured, and genuinely terrified for the first time.
She didn't stop. "Don't follow me, Alexander," she said without looking back. "The Ghost is gone. And so is his wife."