Chapter 14
Cassian ran one of the facial scans himself, eyes locked on the screen as it flashed green. “Clear. Celeste Aragon. Zero red flags. You’re not just safe, you’re invisible now.”
“Good. Let’s run it again.”
At night, when the world outside was quiet and Aziel was asleep wrapped in cartoon blankets, I opened the leather journal Cassian gave me. No one else read it. Just me.
I wrote:
“Celeste is who I become to destroy them. Harmony died the day I begged my husband to choose me, and he chose war instead. She died the moment Margaret hand me my mother’s hairpin and called herself a victim. She died when the man I loved handed my baby brother a ring and made him carry it down the aisle to crown another woman’s queen.”
I stared at the page. My chest burned but I didn’t cry.
Not anymore. Because tears were Harmony’s weapon. But strategy? That’s Celeste’s. And Celeste doesn’t beg.
She builds. And when I step back into their world–it won’t be as the girl they broke. It’ll be like the storm they never saw coming.
I was busy training with Cassian’s men when Cassian called me. I was sweating, muscles sore, and halfway through disarming one of his top guys in a hand–to–hand simulation when I heard him say my name sharp across the comm line. “Celeste. Come inside. Now.”
I didn’t even change. I walked into the surveillance room still in my tactical gear, wiping blood from my knuckles with a rag. Cassian was sitting in front of six screens, jaw tight, eyes colder than usual. When he turned to me, he didn’t even speak. He just hit play.
The video started with static. Grainy at first. Then it cleared into a sharp, sick little scene.
Me–Harmony–screaming like I’d lost my fucking mind. Aziel was in the shot, shoved inside a kennel, sobbing. Margaret was crying in the corner, trying to “protect❞ him, screaming for me to stop. And then my face–my old face–twisted in rage, spit flying from my mouth as I screamed at her, “You stole him! I’ll kill you, Margaret!”
And then came the part where she crawled toward Aziel, held him, whispered “You’re safe now, baby. I’m here,” and the fake me dragged her by the hair and kicked her across the floor.
I didn’t say anything for a few seconds. I just stood there. Cassian muted the audio, looked at me like he was studying a weapon.
“It’s fake,” I said, but my voice was calm. Almost amused. “She went all–in this time.”
He nodded. “Al manipulation. We can trace the shadow inconsistencies. Voice mod’s
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sloppy too. I’ve got my team already deconstructing it.‘
But I didn’t care about the tech. I walked over to the second monitor, the one showing live comment threads from underworld forums and public threads that somehow always leak everything fast. And I read them. Every single one.
“Fucking psycho. That woman’s not a mother, she’s a monster.”
“Who puts a special needs kid in a cage? Lock her up and burn the key.”
“Margaret’s a saint. She’s been protecting that boy since day one.”
“Harmony needs to be hunted. Bounty or not. I’ll bring her in myself.”
“She faked her death, now she faked her sanity. Textbook narcissist.”
“Aziel deserves a real home. Not that broken psycho freak show.” “Let’s be honest. She was always jealous. Margaret won. She snapped.”
“Why is she still breathing? Justice for Margaret. Justice for Aziel.”
I stared at the screen.
Then I laughed.
Not softly. Not bitterly. I laughed like I’d been waiting for this exact moment to prove just how far they’d go to bury me. I laughed because they thought a viral lie could scare me. Because they thought I’d crawl back into the shadows.
Cassian raised a brow. “You good?”
I wiped a tear from my eye from laughing too hard and sat down in the chair beside him.
“I’m more than good,” I said. “They just handed me everything I needed. If Margaret’s faking this hard, it means she’s scared. If Hakeem’s letting it spread, it means he’s desperate. And if the world believes it?”
I leaned forward and smiled at the headlines again.
“Then it’s time I stop surviving… and start showing them what I really look like when I fight back.”
And funny how the world is being a fool…
Applauding monsters dressed in white and pearls while the real survivors are hiding in shadows just to breathe. Margaret’s foundation got picked up by every major outlet like she was some born–again saint. She had those crocodile tears timed so perfectly on live interviews and kept wearing that stupid broken pearl bracelet like it meant something deep and painful when really, it was probably just another prop her PR team handed her before the cameras started rolling.
And Hakeem? That bastard had the audacity to accept a humanitarian award last week. Walked up on that stage in his expensive suit with a cold grin and said, “Everyone deserves to feel safe. Especially women and children.”
I almost broke the scroon
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I almost broke the screen.
Meanwhile, every news cycle started painting me as some unstable danger to society. Articles with titles like “Inside the Mind of a Mafia Heiress Turned Threat,” and “Was Harmony Always Violent?” were everywhere. Every lie was dressed in enough sympathy for Margaret and Aziel that the world didn’t even bother to question the holes in the story. Nobody asked why the timeline was off. Why no one could verify the source. Why Aziel hadn’t been seen once in person since the leak.
They believed it because people don’t want the truth. They want theater.
And me? I stayed quiet. I trained every morning until my lungs burned and my arms went numb. I ran drills until my legs gave out and hacked simulated firewalls until I could break into any system blindfolded. Cassian kept offering help, kept asking when I’d strike, kept reminding me he could plant stories, flip names, trigger blackmail. But I looked him straight in the eye and told him, “Not now.”
I want my comeback to hit like a fucking tornado. I want that bitch Margaret screaming my name the way my mother screamed when she burned alive in that house. I want to watch them both kneel in front of me on floors soaked in salt while I whip every last lie from their backs until the only thing they taste is pain and regret.
Chapter 14
