Chapter 3

Anya Alexander POV:

The drive was a blur of city lights smearing into long, watercolor streaks. I sat in the back of the silent, impossibly smooth luxury car, the world outside the tinted windows feeling like a movie I was no longer a part of. The lawyer, a kind-faced man named Arthur, had arranged everything. A private jet. A secure location. He spoke in hushed, respectful tones, telling me my father was waiting, that he was overjoyed, that everything would be taken care of.

I just nodded, my mind a maelstrom of shock and grief. Father. The word was a foreign country I was now a citizen of.

We arrived at a private airfield. As I stepped onto the tarmac, the roar of the jet engines a physical force, my old phone-the one I hadn't yet thrown away-buzzed one last time. It was a video call from Hamilton.

Against my better judgment, my thumb swiped to answer.

His face filled the screen. He was in his hotel room, the one from Kacey' s video, but she was nowhere in sight. The room was pristine. He panned the camera around, showing me the neatly made bed, the empty chairs.

"Hey, beautiful," he said, his voice the familiar, warm timbre that used to feel like home. "Just checking in. Another boring conference dinner. Wish you were here."

The lie was so effortless, so practiced. It made my stomach turn.

"I'm tired, Hamilton," I said, my voice flat.

"I know, baby. I'm sorry about tonight," he said, his expression a perfect pantomime of regret. "I promise I'll make it up to you. Big time. Tomorrow, we' ll do whatever you want."

Tomorrow. Our anniversary. The anniversary of a marriage that never was.

"Were you busy?" I asked, the words tasting like poison. "Busy betraying me?"

He chuckled, a low, intimate sound. "Anya, don't be silly. You know you're the only one for me. If I ever betrayed you, I'd deserve to lose everything, to be struck by lightning." He leaned closer to the screen, his eyes dark and intense. "I swear it on my life."

I didn't say anything. I just stared at his face, the face I had loved, the face of a stranger.

"I'll see you in the morning," he said, blowing a kiss to the camera before hanging up.

I switched the phone off and handed it to Arthur' s assistant. "Get rid of this."

The flight was long. I slept, a deep, dreamless sleep of pure exhaustion. I woke up to the gentle touch of a flight attendant. We were landing.

The place my father lived was less a house and more a self-contained kingdom. A sprawling, ultra-modern fortress carved into the side of a mountain, overlooking a turquoise sea. It was a monument to wealth, power, and seclusion.

Fred Warner was waiting for me. He was older than I'd imagined, his hair a shock of white, his frame thin but wiry. But his eyes... his eyes were a startlingly familiar shade of blue. My eyes. He stood there, looking at me, his face a canvas of emotions too complex to read. Then, a single tear traced a path through the lines on his face.

"Anya," he whispered, his voice rough with disuse. "My daughter."

The dam inside me broke. All the pain, the betrayal, the confusion of the past twenty-four hours came rushing out in a tidal wave of sobs. I stumbled forward, and he caught me, his arms surprisingly strong as he pulled me into an embrace that felt like coming home to a place I' d never known.

Over the next few days, the story unfolded. He told me about my mother, a brilliant scientist who had died in a lab accident he believed was no accident. Fearing for my safety, he had hidden me away, but the people entrusted with my care had betrayed him, and I was lost to the system. He had spent two decades and a vast fortune searching for me.

He provided me with everything. The best doctors, a team of lawyers, and unconditional support. He was furious about Hamilton, his protective rage a terrifying and comforting thing to witness. He wanted to destroy him.

"Not yet," I told him, my voice steady for the first time in days. "He took my work, my name, my past. I'm going to take his future."

My father looked at me, a slow smile spreading across his face. "Just like your mother," he said, his eyes shining with pride.

A new identity was forged. I was no longer Anya Alexander, the ghost developer with a criminal record. I was Anya Warner, heiress to one of the largest, most private tech fortunes in the world.

My first act was to quietly transfer the core patents of the technology I had developed-the true engine of Glass Innovations-into a new shell corporation under my new name. Hamilton, in his arrogance, had never bothered with the legal minutiae. He' d left all the intellectual property under the name "A. Alexander" on our sham partnership agreement, an entity that didn't legally exist. It was a loophole so large I could drive a fleet of trucks through it.

My second act was to prepare for my debut at The Apex Club.

The day of the event, I was at a high-tech racing simulation center my father owned. It was one of the perks of having a billionaire dad who shared my passion for speed and engineering. I needed to clear my head. The simulation was for an experimental vehicle, one I had designed the software for years ago.

Hamilton arrived unexpectedly. He must have pulled some strings to find out where I was. He brought Kacey with him.

"Anya, there you are," he said, all smiles and charisma, as if nothing had happened. "I wanted to surprise you. A little anniversary fun. Kacey was just telling me how much she wanted to try this simulator."

He was trying to normalize it. To fold Kacey into our life, to make it seem like this was all perfectly reasonable. The sheer audacity of it left me breathless.

I just stared at him, my expression blank. I walked past them without a word, heading straight for the simulation pod. I strapped myself in, pulling the helmet over my head, shutting out the world. Shutting them out.

"I'll be your co-pilot!" Hamilton called out, his voice tinny through the helmet's comms.

I ignored him. I knew the course, the vehicle dynamics, the code itself. I didn't need a co-pilot.

Just as I was about to initialize the sequence, his phone rang. I saw him glance at it through the pod's canopy. He frowned, his body language stiffening. He walked a few feet away, his back to me, his voice a low murmur. I couldn't hear the words, but I saw the caller ID on his watch face when he raised his wrist.

Grant Daugherty. His mentor. The ruthless venture capitalist who had always seen me as a liability.

I felt a chill crawl down my spine. I slipped out of the pod, my soft-soled shoes silent on the polished concrete floor. I moved into the shadows of a large support pillar, my heart hammering against my ribs.

"-has to be clean, Hamilton," Grant was saying, his voice a low growl. "The merger is at a critical stage. We can't have her past cropping up. And now she's pregnant? It's a complication we don't need."

"I know, Grant, I'm handling it," Hamilton said, his voice tight with frustration. "The simulator... Kacey adjusted the parameters. A little malfunction. A scare. Enough to make her miscarry. Tragic accident. She'll be devastated, she'll need me, and she'll be too weak to cause any trouble when we announce the wedding."

The world stopped.

It wasn't a scare. It was an assassination attempt. On my child.

Rage, pure and undiluted, surged through me. It was a white-hot fire that burned away every last vestige of love, every shred of doubt. He wasn't just a liar and a cheater. He was a monster.

I turned, my movements stiff, robotic. I walked back to the simulator, my face a mask of cold fury. I strapped myself back in. I heard Hamilton end his call, his footsteps approaching.

"Ready, baby?" he asked, his voice returning to its normal, loving tone.

I didn't answer. I slammed my hand down on the initialization button. The pod whirred to life, the canopy sealing me inside. The simulation began.

The vehicle rocketed forward. But something was wrong. The steering was sluggish. The telemetry on the screen was flickering, showing critical errors. The road ahead, a treacherous mountain pass I knew by heart, was rendered incorrectly. A cliff face where there should have been a tunnel.

Kacey's adjustments.

The brake command failed. The pod hurtled towards the digital cliff wall at over two hundred miles per hour. The impact was a bone-jarring, virtual explosion of light and sound. In the real world, the pod's safety harnesses snapped tight, slamming me against the seat. The force was immense.

Instinct took over. I curled my body, my arms wrapping around my stomach, a futile attempt to shield my baby from the violent jolt.

The last thing I heard before the system emergency-shutdown plunged the world into darkness was Hamilton's voice, laced with fake panic, shouting my name. And through the now-dark canopy, I saw him. He wasn't rushing towards me.

He was rushing towards Kacey, pulling her behind him, shielding her from the non-existent danger.