The office was dark except for the glow of Adrian's computer screen, painting his face in pale blue light. The city glittered beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows—a million lights, a million lives, all of them indifferent to the man sitting alone in his leather throne, holding a small black USB drive like it contained the secrets of the universe.
Maybe it did.
He'd been fiddling with the drive for twenty minutes now. Turning it over. Turning it over again. Attorney Alexander Shapua had pressed it into his hands weeks ago with a gravity that Adrian had dismissed at the time. "Your father wanted you to have this. When you're ready."
He hadn't been ready. He'd shoved it in a drawer and forgotten about it—buried it under contracts and proposals and the thousand daily emergencies of running a multi-billion-dollar empire. But Star had found it this morning. Star had plugged it in. Star had watched his father speak from beyond the grave, and now Adrian couldn't unhear those words.
"The company is in danger."
"There are people who want it for themselves."
"Find someone you trust and marry to save Stark Architects."
He inserted the USB into the computer.
The screen flickered. And there he was—David Stark, his father, alive again in pixels and light. The same brown, the same blue eyes, and the same slight frown between his brows that appeared when he was thinking too hard. He adjusted his glasses with the awkward gesture of a man who'd never quite gotten used to being filmed.
"Adrian. If you're seeing this, it means either I'm dead or I am missing. How... I don't know."
Adrian watched the video play through again. Every word. Every pause. Every flicker of fear that crossed his father's face when footsteps sounded off-camera. The screen went black, and Adrian sat in the silence that followed, his mind racing.
This means a lot of things. And yet nothing at all.
He'd run Stark Architects for nearly a decade. Taken it from an average, mid-tier firm to a multi-billion-dollar powerhouse that dominated every sector it touched. Stock ratings up over 200%. Market influence that stretched beyond Crestfall, beyond the state, beyond anything David could have imagined when he'd first founded the company.
And in all that time—eight years—Adrian had never once felt threatened. Never once sensed danger lurking in the shadows. No hostile takeovers. No mysterious investors. No midnight warnings from lawyers with grave expressions.
So why did David think there was danger?
Who wants the company for themselves?
Who does he trust?
The questions circled like vultures, picking at the carcass of everything Adrian thought he knew about his father. He'd spent years hating David Stark. Years he'd believed the story Maria had fed him—that David had disappeared after a fight, that he'd been caught cheating, that he'd chosen to abandon his family rather than face the consequences.
Adrian had struggled to believe it. Some small, hopeful part of him had always whispered: He'll come back. They'll work it out. He wouldn't just leave us.
But days turned into months. Months turned into years. And David never returned.
Now this video—this desperate, frightened message from a man who clearly knew something was coming—painted a different picture entirely. David hadn't run away. David had been eliminated. And all of it—the danger, the disappearance, the warning from beyond the grave—was about the company.
Stark Architects wasn't even that big eight years ago, Adrian thought, his brow furrowing. It was average. Respectable but unremarkable. I'm the one who built it into what it is now. I studied. I designed. I grew it.
Was that what the enemy wanted?
The realization hit him like ice water.
Did someone let me build the company—encourage it, even—just so they could take it when it was greasy and milky and worth taking? Did they wait in the shadows while I did all the work, knowing they'd snatch it away the moment it was valuable enough?
"But who?"
The words came out loud, startling him.
"Honey, are you going to stay out late?"
Adrian's head snapped up. Maria stood in the doorway, her silhouette framed by the hallway light. How long had she been there? How much had she heard?
His hand moved on instinct, yanking the USB from the computer. The video disappeared, replaced by his desktop wallpaper—a generic cityscape, anonymous and revealing nothing.
"No." Adrian forced a chuckle, reaching up to scratch his eyes before sliding his glasses back into place. "I'll wrap up."
When he looked up again, Maria was frozen in the doorway. Her face had gone slack—not with concern, but with something else. Something that looked almost like... recognition.
"Mom?"
Maria blinked, the spell broken. "I'm sorry." She pressed a hand to her chest, her laugh soft and self-deprecating. "You just reminded me of David. He was exactly your age and looked just like that when he first asked me out."
She wiped at her eyes—carefully, delicately, preserving her makeup with the practiced precision of a woman who'd spent decades perfecting the art of crying beautifully.
Imaginary tears, Adrian thought, then immediately felt guilty for thinking it. His mother had cancer. His mother was facing her own mortality. She was allowed to be emotional.
"Yeah?" He stood, walking around his grand desk, his movements slow and contemplative. He settled onto the leather couch in the corner of his office, and Maria sat beside him, her perfume filling the space between them.
Adrian's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. He was trying to find the words—the right words, the careful words—for a question he wasn't sure he wanted answered.
"What if something had happened to him?"
Maria's brows creased. "What do you mean?"
"What if he'd been murdered?" Adrian's voice was cautious, testing. "And we've been quiet all this time?"
Maria laughed—a nervous sound, too high, too quick. "I told you the truth about what happened. Why would you think that?"
"It's nothing." Adrian dismissed it with a wave of his hand, the movement deliberately casual. "Just a thought."
She has cancer, he reminded himself firmly. The last thing she needs is stress over baseless claims. Over a video that might mean nothing. Over ghosts that should stay buried.
"You shouldn't be here—" he started, reaching for his phone as it rang from the desk.
He crossed the room and picked it up, frowning at the caller ID. The gateman. The estate's gateman never called him directly. Something was wrong.
Adrian's expression shifted—confusion, then concern, then something sharper.
"I'll be there soon," he said, already reaching for his keys.
"What's wrong?" Maria asked, rising from the couch.
"Star left."
The words came out flat, but his movements were anything but. He grabbed his jacket, his keys, his phone—moving with the focused urgency of a man who'd just discovered something precious had slipped through his fingers.
He was out the door before Maria could respond.
He didn't see the grin that spread across her face—slow and satisfied, like a cat who'd just watched a particularly troublesome mouse run directly into a trap.
It disappeared just as fast, smoothed back into the mask of the concerned, cancer-stricken mother.
Maria stood alone in the empty office, the city glittering beyond the windows, and smiled at nothing at all.
***
"How are you so connected that you got this place at this time?"
Star walked through the door of the shooting house, her eyes scanning the space with curiosity and something darker. Something hungrier. They'd driven back to Crestfall in the dead of night because she couldn't sleep, because the rage was a living thing inside her chest, because she needed to perfect her aim before she faced Frieda.
A shooting house. Just like that. Lucian had made a call, and a shooting house had materialized.
"I'm just that connected," Lucian replied, arranging the dummies in a neat row at the far end of the range. His hands were steady, his movements precise, his voice carefully casual. He straightened one of the targets, adjusting its head until it sat perfectly atop its fabric shoulders.
"You need to be calm if you want to feel every ounce of revenge when you take it," he began, his back still turned to her. "Rage makes you sloppy. Desperation makes you miss. You need to be cold. Focused. You need to—"
BANG.
The shot echoed through the range like a thunderclap.
Lucian's heart stopped.
His entire body locked up, his hand still resting on the dummy's shoulder—the same dummy that now had a bullet hole precisely where its forehead used to be. The fabric still smoked faintly from the heat of the bullet's passage.
He couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't process the fact that Star—his Star, the girl he'd taught to throw a punch and change a tire and never, never this—had just pulled the trigger with him standing inches from the target.
"So. Anything you've been hiding from me?"
Star's voice floated across the range, casual as anything. Like she'd just asked about the weather. Like she hadn't just nearly put a bullet through his skull.
Lucian spun around, his heart slamming against his ribs like it was trying to escape. "You almost shot me!"
His voice came out louder than he intended—borderline hysterical, if he was being honest with himself. He strode across the range, putting as much distance between himself and those dummies as possible.
Star inspected the gun in her hands with mild disappointment. "I missed. I think I got rusty."
Rusty. She thought she got rusty. Not oh my god I almost killed my best friend. Not sorry for the near-death experience. Just... rusty.
She loaded another round. Cocked the gun with a satisfying click.
Lucian crossed to her in three quick strides and grabbed her shoulder, turning her to face him. "Hey. Hey." His voice was different now—less panic, more command. "Look at me."
Star sighed—a long, put-upon sound like he was inconveniencing her—and lifted her eyes to his.
"What?!"
Her hazel eyes blazed into his blue ones. And for a moment—a terrible, heart-stopping moment—Lucian didn't recognize the person looking back at him.
"What's wrong with you?" His voice cracked at the edges. "It's like I'm looking at a stranger right now."
Star reached up, removed his hand from her shoulder with deliberate, almost clinical precision, and turned back toward the dummies.
"You didn't answer my question."
She fired again. Another headshot. Another perfect kill.
Lucian stood frozen, watching her. This was Star now. This was what grief and betrayal and a week in a coma had forged in the dark. She might not remember how her mother died, but the fire was there, burning behind her ribs, and it was about to consume her whole.
"Frieda disappeared."
The words came out before he could stop them.
Star halted and turned. The gun hung at her side, but her eyes were sharper than any bullet. "What do you mean?"
"I used all my technology. Everything I have to track her down." Lucian shoved his hands in his pockets, his shoulders tight. "But it's like she stopped existing. No digital footprint. No sightings. Nothing."
Star stared at him for a long, hard moment. Then she turned back to the dummies.
"Well. You didn't look hard enough."
She raised the gun and emptied the rest of her clip in a fit of rage—shot after shot after shot, each one finding its mark with the precision of someone who'd been born for this. Lucian watched her. Watched the way her shoulders shook with every recoil. Watched the way her jaw stayed tight even as the bullets ran out and the gun clicked empty.
I'll find Frieda, he promised himself silently. I'll kill her myself. Star will never have to carry that weight.
She finished her rounds and walked toward him. He was now on the phone outside, the moon hanging fat and silver above them. The shooting house was isolated, surrounded by nothing but darkness and the distant hum of the highway.
Star checked her own phone—the new one Lucian had given her back at the Chateau. She scrolled through her contacts and pressed dial.
"I need more bullets," she said absently as the phone rang in her ear.
Adrian was flying down the highway when his phone rang.
The caller ID flashed: Star.
He answered immediately, his voice breathless with relief he didn't bother to hide. "Star?"
"Hey." Her voice was calm. Too calm. "I just want to say I left. But I'll stop by every now and then for follow-ups with Dr. Mathews."
Adrian pulled over to the side of the highway, killing his engine. The world went quiet except for the distant rush of passing cars and the sound of Star's voice in his ear.
"Wh—mm." He didn't know what to say. Relief that she was safe. Frustration that she'd left. Confusion that she sounded so casual about it. "Why did you leave? Did Tiffany do anything? Or Bonita?"
"No. None of them did anything." A pause. "I just needed air after my mom died. I'll see you tomorrow, Adrian."
"Where are you—"
He never finished the sentence.
The truck came from nowhere—a massive, roaring thing that plowed into the side of his car with the force of a meteor. Adrian wasn't driving. He wasn't strapped in. The impact sent him flying through the windshield like a ragdoll, glass shattering around him in a glittering storm, his body tumbling through the air before crashing into the grassy field beyond the shoulder.
Everything went dark. Then light. Then something in between.
"ADRIAN!"
The scream came from the phone, still clutched in his hand somewhere in the grass. Star's voice—panicked, terrified, alive.
Back at the shooting house, Lucian ended his call the moment he heard Star scream. He strode over, his limp barely slowing him, and found her gripping the phone with white-knuckled terror.
"Be calm," he said, his hands landing on her shoulders. "What happened?"
"I think Adrian is in danger." The words came out in a rush, tripping over each other. Tears were already streaming down her cheeks, cutting tracks through the faint dust of gunpowder. "I heard a car accident sound, Lucy. I need to go to him."
Lucian's jaw tightened. Adrian. The man who'd orchestrated his near-murder just last night. The man who'd made it very clear that Lucian was unwelcome, unwanted, unworthy of standing in the same room as Star. And now Star wanted to race off into the night to save him.
For one flashing second, Lucian wished that if Adrian was truly in danger, he'd just die.
"How—where are you even going?" he asked, his brows furrowing. "You don't know where he is."
Star looked at her phone. The call was still connected. She thrust it into Lucian's hands.
"Please trace this for me."
She was already moving—swinging her leg over her motorbike, the same sleek black machine she'd found at the Chateau. Everything there was in her name. She still didn't know who was behind it. Right now, she didn't care.
Lucian stood there, her phone in his hands, and felt the universe laughing at him. Helping save his love rival. The man whose uncle had put a bullet in his thigh. He is still limping from that encounter.
He ran a hand through his hair and got to work.
"Okay... here." He handed Star his business phone. "He's by the B1 Highway."
"I know where B1 is," Star said, already revving the engine.
"Yes, but if something happens to you, I need to know where you are. I didn't install the tracking app on your phone yet."
Star rolled her eyes, accepted the phone, and peeled out into the night—a black blur against the darkness, her hair streaming behind her like a battle flag.
Lucian reached for his waistband. It felt light. Too light.
He scoffed into the empty air.
"Of course she took my gun."
***
Adrian groaned, consciousness swimming back to him in painful waves.
He was lying on his stomach in the grass, his body screaming with every breath. Something was wrong with his ribs. Something was wrong with his vision—blurry at the edges, doubling when he tried to focus. His car was overturned a few meters away, its wheels still spinning uselessly against the night sky.
He tried to stand. Failed. Tried again.
At least I wasn't in it, he thought hazily. At least I wasn't—
A shadow fell over him.
Adrian looked up, his neck protesting the movement. A tall figure stood silhouetted against the bright moon, long hair tied back in a ponytail. He was wearing a suit—immaculate, perfectly pressed—and holding a gun.
Adrian recognized him.
Kefas.
The man reached down and yanked Adrian up by his collar, and Adrian winced at the pain that shot through his battered body.
"You," Adrian rasped, his mouth filling with the copper taste of blood.
"Yes." Kefas's grin was devilish, wide and satisfied. "Me."
"What do you want?"
"I'm here to kill you, Adrian." Kefas's voice was almost pleasant. Conversational. "Just like your father."
If Kefas expected shock, he was disappointed. Adrian's expression didn't crumble into horror—it hardened into rage. With every ounce of strength he had left, he yanked himself free from Kefas's grip and threw a punch that connected with the man's face with a satisfying crack.
"You killed my dad?"
He threw another punch. This time, Kefas caught it mid-air, his fingers wrapping around Adrian's fist like a vice.
"Yes." Kefas smiled, blood trickling from his lip. "Thanks for developing the company for me. You did a very good job."
He whistled.
Three men emerged from the shadows—body-built, professional, unmistakably dangerous. One carried a gun. Another carried a machine saw, its blade glinting in the moonlight. The third held a bottle of oil and a lighter, his expression blank and bored.
"They're the best assassins Lucian Throne could rent me," Kefas said, already walking toward his car. "His best men. They always get the job done."
He slid into the driver's seat, started the engine, and zoomed off—satisfied, triumphant, certain of his victory.
As Kefas drove away, his headlights swept across the road ahead.
And there she was.
A woman on a motorcycle, her hair cascading behind her like liquid silk, her black leather jacket hugging curves that made his breath catch even as he passed her at speed. The bike was sleek and black and powerful, and so was she. For one suspended moment, their eyes met through the windshield—her hazel gaze reflecting his headlights like precious stones.
Kefas pulled out his phone and snapped a picture.
The most beautiful view I've ever seen, he thought. I'll track her down later. Kiss those red, soft-looking lips. Look into those beautiful eyes up close.
They passed each other, each heading in opposite directions. Kefas toward whatever dark victory he thought he'd won. Star toward the man bleeding in the grass.
Star killed the engine and dismounted in one fluid motion.
The assassins turned at the sound of her approach. The one with the gun raised his weapon and fired.
Adrian, still struggling to his feet, saw only a silhouette—a curved, powerful figure moving through the darkness with lethal grace. She dodged the bullet like it was moving in slow motion.
"Please, lady, I've got this—" he started.
The assassin with the gun crumpled to the ground, a bullet hole perfectly centered between his eyes.
Before the others could react, Star fired twice more. Two more bodies hit the dirt.
Silence.
Adrian stared at the woman approaching him, his brain struggling to reconcile what he'd just witnessed with the person he saw. The black leather jacket. The jeans that hugged her legs. The gun still smoking in her hand. The face that emerged from the shadows as she drew closer—
Star.
"Star?"
His vision swam. The world tilted sideways. And then everything went black.
Star lunged forward and caught him before he could hit the ground. He was heavy—very heavy—and she had to lower him carefully, her muscles straining with the effort.
"Adrian." She patted his cheek. Nothing. "Adrian!"
She pressed her hands against his chest and pushed—one, two, three compressions. Then she leaned forward, pinched his nose, and breathed into his mouth.
She slapped him.
Adrian's eyes flew open, his chest heaving, his breath ragged and desperate.
"Hey." Star's face hovered above him, her expression soft with relief. "You scared me a bit there."
Adrian's gaze darted around—the bodies, the overturned car, the gun on the ground beside Star's knee. His expression shifted from confusion to horror to something that looked almost like accusation.
"What did you do?"
He was looking at her like a criminal. Like a stranger. Like someone he didn't recognize at all.