Confidential was what was written on it.
I sat down on the floor; the material was cool against my skin. I dropped the envelope onto the glass coffee table.
Open it, a voice in my head whispered. The Tokyo merger details. The family secrets. The leverage you need.
I reached for it, my fingernail sliding right up to the edge of the heavy, untouched wax seal. The red wax was smooth, perfect—a symbol of a world that valued appearances over everything. But I stopped. My hand hovered, trembling just a fraction.
If I broke that seal, it wouldn't be fine. This was confidential, and principles matter. Besides, the evidence would be undeniable. No, I thought, slowly pulling my hand back. The envelope is bait. But I didn't need to open it to discover the truth. I had something better—I had the internet and the skills to use it.
I stood up and walked back into the study. The three curved monitors of the command center were still glowing, waiting patiently for me like loyal servants. I dropped into the captain's chair, feeling the heavy leather embrace me. I cracked my knuckles—a habit from my all-nighters researching scripts that made the Vanes their millions.
"Okay, Ms. Cross," I murmured to the empty room. "Let's see who you really are. Not from people's mouths, but through evidence."
I opened a new tab. My fingers flew across the mechanical keyboard.
Sloane Cross.
Enter.
The screen flashed. Standard Search: 0 Image Results.
I smirked. Of course. To the public, she was a ghost. Just like me. Corporate logos appeared, stock prices fluctuated on graphs, and generic, sterile press releases filled the results. But there wasn't a single photograph of a human face. She had scrubbed the internet clean. Erased herself from the digital landscape.
Smart, I thought.
I wasn't just a writer. I was tech-savvy, too. To write the thrillers critics praised, I had learned how to unlock doors that didn't exist. "This is a search not everyone can do," I whispered. "Time to hack the system."
I opened a command prompt, the black screen with green text appearing like an old friend. I bypassed the standard PR filters and tapped into the Dark Media archives—the database used by paparazzi for killed stories. These were the digital ghosts that refused to stay dead. I ran the script I'd written years ago.
Processing... Bypassing the walls... ACCESS GRANTED.
The screen flickered. There was Sloane. Not the woman who made me an omelet this morning.
There was a photo of her in a tuxedo at a private Met Gala after-party, looking bored out of her mind.
There was a grainy shot of her shaking hands with the Prime Minister of Japan.
There was a high-resolution shot of her stepping out of a helicopter, wearing sunglasses and a suit cut from midnight itself.
She looked... cold. Ruthless. Her eyes, the ones that had looked at me with amusement in the rain, were dead sharks in these photos. I clicked on a leaked internal memo from Forbes.
Headline: THE IRON HEIR: How Sloane Doubled the Empire's Value in Two Years.
"The CEO is known for being uncaring, cold, and ruthlessly efficient. Rumors of a rift with her grandmother, the matriarch Eleanor, have sparked concerns..."
"Eleanor," I whispered, tapping the screen. "So that's Grandma."
I searched for her. Eleanor Cross. An image popped up of an elderly woman who looked like she ate nails for breakfast. Steel-gray hair, pearls the size of golf balls, and a glare that could freeze a volcano.
"Yikes," I muttered. "No wonder she's hiding in a garage."
I leaned back, spinning the chair. It all made sense. The expensive car. The cooking skills. The reason she was standing in the rain looking miserable. She wasn't broke. She was burnt out. She was running from the "Iron Heir" title to find some peace.
And then she met me. A girl with no name. No money. I was her vacation. Her rebellion. A slow, dangerous smile spread across my face.
"You poor, sweet billionaire," I said to the photo on the screen. "You think you're using me to escape? You think I'm your little charity case?"
I closed the browser tabs. I erased the history. I wiped the digital footprints. I made sure the "Ghost" remained a ghost to everyone else. I was Sienna. I had been raised in a shark tank just like her. We were the same breed, Sloane and I. Broken royalty hiding in the mud.
But there was one difference. She was exhausted by work. I was hiding because I was preparing for war.
I needed money. I needed that advance from Dave. To get it, I needed a story that would set the world on fire. Well, I didn't need to invent one anymore. I was living it. I placed my hands on the keyboard.
"Chapter One," I whispered.
The typing was a rhythmic, violent staccato. I wrote about the tuxedo. The helicopter. The secret hidden in the grease under a woman's fingernails. I wrote about the girl in the rain who was really a wolf in silk. I lost myself in the flow. The sun began to dip, casting long, orange shadows across the bridge outside.
I was halfway through a scene about a corporate gala when the front door buzzed. The lock hissed. My heart did a somersault. I didn't minimize the window. I didn't hide the screen.
"Sienna?" her voice called out. She sounded tired.
I didn't move. I just stared at the three monitors glowing with her own face, with her own lies.
"In here, Ms. Cross," I said, my voice steady.
Silence followed. Then, the heavy tread of her boots approaching the study. She appeared in the doorway, still in her work shirt, a smudge of oil on her cheek. She looked at me, then her eyes shifted to the screens.
The air in the room turned to ice.