The photo wouldn't stop vibrating on Zara's screen.
A body, Tied to a chair.... Blood at the mouth, Lifeless. Face swollen, but still visible.
"Bridget."
The woman who stood by her, protected her, fought beside her, she wasn't just an assistant she was like a sister but now she's.... Gone.
Zara dropped the phone, She didn't scream... She couldn't.
---
Wolfe Penthouse.
Damian saw the photo before she said a word.
He pulled it from the floor, eyes narrowing with a lethal coldness she'd never sensed before but now she saw it, fully formed.
"Where?"
"No address," Zara said quietly. "Just the message."
~"You chose wrong."
Damian was already moving.
Jacket on, Phone to ear, Gun retrieved from a locked drawer.
"Cain," he barked into the line. "Bring the team. Code Black. All of them."
He hung up and looked at her.
"I told you , Harrison doesn't bluff."
Zara stared at him. "You said you'd protect me."
"I will."
"But you didn't protect her." she looked up with puffy eyes.
The words hung heavy between them.
Damian stepped forward. "We'll bury him for this."
Zara looked him in the eye. "Not until I look him in the face." Her eyes turning cold.
---
Lancaster Global Boardroom
Silence. Grief.
The board had just received the news: Bridget Harrow, executive VP, found murdered in an abandoned shipping warehouse on Roosevelt Island.
Tied up. Tortured. Executed.
Media frenzy, Internal panic, Shareholders fleeing.
Zara stood at the head of the table.
"We will not run this company in fear," she said.
Her voice didn't shake.
Her hands did, under the table. She needed to be strong.
"If we give in, we prove them right. We show them our blood is leverage. Bridget deserves better than that. So do we."
The room clapped, hesitantly. But no one really felt safe.
---
1:22 P.M. Surveillance Compound (Off-the-Grid Location)
They found Harrison's hacker... a guy named Marco, trembling behind ten monitors and a dirty hoodie.
Damian slammed him into the wall.
"Where is he?"
Marco spat blood. "You think he tells me everything? I'm a code monkey..."
"You're a dead man walking if you don't talk."
Marco felt chilled, he broke. Ratted out the last three burner phones, the hidden safe house network, and one encrypted file named:
~"Lancaster Origin.wav"
Zara stepped forward, took the flash drive, and walked away.
She didn't want to see Damian beat the man bloody.
But she didn't stop it either.
Not this time.
---
5:12 P.M. Zara's Apartment
She played the file. A voice recording, Old and Grainy.
Her mother's voice.
~"I told Richard we shouldn't do business with them. Wolfe isn't like us. He's ruthless. He watches people like they're puzzles to be solved. Like… like he's already planning the next ten years around them."
Then her father's voice, cutting in:
~"You worry too much. The boy's just a lil ambitious, not dangerous."
Then silence.
Then another voice... this one unmistakably young Damian Wolfe.
~"You don't see it yet, Mr. Lancaster. But someday, your daughter will."
~"See what?" her father asked.
~"That I was never part of your story," Damian said. "You were part of mine."
The tape cut out.
---
Zara dropped the drive like it was on fire.
Her mother had known. And had warned her father.
Damian had been watching since she was a child, not just for revenge.
But for design.
Like he'd been planning to possess her from the beginning.
---
7:44 P.M. Lancaster Tower Rooftop (Again)
Zara returned.
Alone.
To the place where her father died. Where Bridget's murder had been orchestrated. Where everything, and everyone came undone.
She lit a cigarette, even though she didn't smoke.
And waited.
Damian arrived minutes later. Dressed in black. He was Quiet.
He stood next to her but Didn't touch her, neither Did he speak.
Just waited.
She finally said, "You've been in my life longer than I've known myself."
He nodded once.
"I thought Bridget was safe. She never even had a target on her back."
Damian's voice was low and Controlled. "Harrison knew you loved her."
Zara blinked fast.
She wouldn't cry for the cameras in the skyline.
Only for herself.
"Everything I touch dies, Damian."
"No," he said. "Everything you touch fights."
She looked at him. "Even you?"
"I was dead long before you, Zara. You brought me back."
She turned to him slowly.
Eyes glassy. Face flushed.
"I don't want to survive this war just to be alone at the end."
Damian didn't speak.
Instead, he reached into his jacket and pulled out a small black box.
Not a ring, But a key.
"To a villa in Spain," he said. "With no Wi-Fi, no security cameras, no world."
Zara swallowed, "Is that a promise?"
"No," Damian said. "It's a contingency. For when this ends, if it ends, if we survive"
She took the key, held it in her palm... and then she kissed him.
Fierce, Raw, Final.
As if one of them wouldn't survive the next week.
---
That Night
Zara entered her private vault, something only she and Bridget had access to.
She found the folders still sealed. The files untouched.
Except one.
A security log slipped under the door.
Someone had accessed the vault two days ago... Using Bridget's passcode.
Zara froze.
Because Bridget had died before then.
Which only meant…
Someone else had used her access.
And only one person knew Bridget's personal code.
Logan.