Chapter 14 - BLACKOUTEmergency lights flashed red across the room.
Shouts erupted from the hallway. Weapons drawn. Boots running. Screens dying one by one.
Agent Keene grabbed my arm and pulled me behind the conference table.
My father moved toward Celeste.
Too late.
The guard behind her was already on the floor, gasping, a needle in his neck. Celeste stood with her cuffs loose around one wrist.
The tears were gone.
So was the mask.
Jules lunged. Celeste lifted the fallen guard’s gun and aimed it at his chest.
“Don’t,” she said.
I froze.
My son froze too.
Celeste backed toward the door.
“You warned Aurora,” I said.
She smiled. “Aurora warned you.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s smarter than all of us.”
My father’s voice was deadly calm. “Who do you serve, Celeste?”
“For years? Vivian. For months? Nathan. Tonight?” She glanced at me. “Myself.”
Keene aimed her weapon. “Drop the gun.”
Celeste pressed the muzzle against her own ribs.
“You shoot, I fall. If I fall, my dead-man switch releases a file Vivian wants buried.”
Keene did not lower her gun.
“What file?” I asked.
Celeste’s eyes moved to my father.
“The one showing Elias knew Vivian was alive.”
The blackout seemed to deepen.
My father did not deny it quickly enough.
I looked at him.
“Is she lying?”
His silence was becoming a language I hated understanding.
Celeste laughed softly.
“I told you, Lena. Men who protect you still choose what truth you can survive.”
My father stepped forward. “I believed Vivian was alive. I did not know where she was.”
“When?”
He looked at me.
“When did you know?” I asked.
His voice was almost inaudible.
“Eight years ago.”
Eight years.
Before Nathan.
Before Celeste.
Before two hundred lashes.
Before everything.
I felt something inside me detach from him.
Celeste used the moment.
She slipped through the doorway and vanished into the red-lit hall.
Keene cursed and ran after her. Jules started to follow, but I grabbed his sleeve.
“Don’t.”
He looked down at my hand.
For one suspended second, neither of us moved.
Then he stayed.
My father looked at me as if he wanted to explain. As if explanation could resurrect trust.
“I searched for her,” he said.
“You searched for Vivian but not my children?”
“I didn’t know they were alive.”
“You knew she was.”
He had no answer.
The building’s backup generator kicked in. Screens returned slowly. Security feeds flickered.
Keene’s voice came through the radio. “Celeste exited east stairwell. Possible accomplice. Lock down street level.”
Another voice answered. “Too late. Black SUV breached lower gate.”
Vivian’s people again.
Or Celeste’s.
Or someone else entirely.
The world had grown too many enemies.
Jules pulled away from me gently.
“I told you no Vale location was safe.”
He was right.
That hurt less than it should have because the room had no space left for new pain.
On the main screen, Aurora’s live connection reappeared.
But now she was alone.
No Selene.
No Vivian.
Just my daughter in the white room, staring into the camera.
“Aurora,” I said.
Her face remained controlled, but her eyes moved quickly, scanning something off-screen.
“I have four minutes,” she said.
“Where are you?”
“Not Switzerland.”
Keene ran back in, breathless. “What?”
Aurora continued. “The academy is theater. The transfer is theater. Vivian wanted you looking east.”
“Where are you?” Jules demanded.
Aurora’s eyes softened when she heard him.
“Hello, brother.”
His face broke open.
Only a little.
Enough.
Aurora looked back at me.
“I am in New York.”
Every person in the room stopped.
May you like
Then she said the words that turned the rescue into a trap.
“I am inside Blackthorn Manor.”
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