The neon lights of the "Slums" in Veridian City flickered like dying stars. I sat in a cramped, windowless room above a 24-hour noodle shop, the smell of grease and rain permeating the walls. My midnight-blue silk gown was gone, replaced by a black tactical hoodie and jeans I'd bought from a vending machine.
I looked at my reflection in a cracked mirror. I didn't see the "Billionaire's Wife" or the "Vance Heiress." I saw a woman who had been a project for two different men for five years.
"Never again," I whispered.
I opened the laptop. The data on the microchip was a map of my own life a life that had been bought. Every "spontaneous" date Mark took me on, every "coincidental" meeting with Lucian... it was all documented in the Thorne trust logs.
But then, I found a folder buried under a triple-layer encryption titled: PROJECT PHOENIX: PHASE 2.
I clicked it. My heart stopped.
It wasn't a plan to steal my money. It was a plan to replace me. There were photos of a woman her face bandaged, her body type identical to mine. The Thorne family wasn't just waiting for me to "bloom"; they were preparing a body double to take over my identity once I "mysteriously disappeared" after the wedding.
"They don't just want the fortune," I realized, my voice trembling. "They want the bloodline without the woman."
A sharp knock at the door made me slam the laptop shut. I grabbed the tactical knife, my muscles tensing.
"Aria. It's Leo."
I opened the door an inch. Leo slipped in, looking like he'd crawled through a sewer. He was pale, but his eyes were sharp with adrenaline.
"They're everywhere," Leo panted. "Lucian has put a 'Missing Person' bounty on you ten million dollars. Every bounty hunter and dirty cop in the city is looking for a woman in a blue dress."
"Then it's a good thing that woman doesn't exist anymore," I said, tossing him a bag of encrypted hardware. "Leo, I need you to do something dangerous. I need you to leak the 'Phase 2' photos to the dark web, but don't link them to the Thornes yet. Link them to a 'mysterious disappearance' of a socialite."
"You want to start a scandal?"
"I want to start a hunt," I said, my eyes turning to steel. "Lucian thinks he can find me because he knows how I think. He thinks I'll run to my grandfather or hide in a hotel. He doesn't realize I'm going back to the one place he'd never look."
"Where?"
"The Thorne-Vance Headquarters. The building he just 'bought' from me."
One Hour Later: Thorne-Vance (Now Aria Global) HQ
The lobby was crawling with Lucian's elite security. I walked through the front doors, my head down, wearing a courier's uniform. I didn't use the elevator; I used the service shaft I had helped design three years ago when the building was being retrofitted.
I reached the executive floor Mark's old office. It was now Lucian's temporary base.
I slipped through the vents, my breath shallow. I looked through the grate and saw him. Lucian was standing at the floor-to-ceiling window, staring out at the city. He looked devastatingly handsome, but the glass reflected a man who was losing his grip.
"Find her!" Lucian roared at his assistant. "I don't care if you have to burn this city to the ground. If she decodes that chip, we are all dead!"
"Sir," the assistant stammered. "The Vance estate has frozen all cooperation. Silas Vance is claiming you kidnapped her."
"Let him claim whatever he wants! Just find her!"
I watched from the vent, my finger hovering over a small remote Leo had built. I wasn't there to kill him. I was there to haunt him.
I pressed the button.
Every screen in Lucian's office suddenly flickered. The "Project Phoenix" photos the ones of my body double filled the monitors.
Lucian froze. His face went ghostly pale.
"What is this?" he whispered.
A voice my voice, filtered through a distorter filled the room's surround-sound system.
"You spent five years and millions of dollars to build a version of me you could control, Lucian. But you forgot one thing about a Phoenix."
I dropped a small smoke pellet through the vent and kicked the grate open. As the office filled with thick, white mist, I dropped to the floor behind him.
Lucian turned, his gun drawn, but he couldn't see through the smoke.
I leaned in close to his ear, my voice a ghostly whisper. "They don't just rise from the ashes. They burn the person who started the fire."
I jammed a syringe into his neck not poison, but a fast-acting sedative I'd taken from my mother's "kit."
As Lucian slumped to the floor, I leaned over him, looking into his fading blue eyes.
"The wedding is off, Lucian," I whispered. "But the hunt? That's just getting started."
I didn't take his money. I didn't take his gun. I took his wedding ring the one he had intended to put on my finger. I left a small note in its place:
PROPERTY OF A GHOST.
I vanished back into the vents just as the guards burst through the door.
I was no longer the prey. I was the one holding the match