Chapter 5
Seraphina
Dominic said to drop it. Which means I was right to pick it up.
He didn’t raise his voice—he never does. He didn’t need to. He used his smile instead, the one that stretches just a little too wide at the edges. The one that has disarmed enemies and board members alike, then gutted them once they turned their backs. The one that made my skin crawl.
I’ve learned how to read the shape of that smile. Today, it meant: This is your warning.
When I step back into my office, it’s colder than it was when I left. Not in temperature, just in feeling. Like something shifted while I was gone. I don’t trust that I’d know if it did.
My heels tap against the marble floor in an unbroken rhythm, a steady echo bouncing off glass and silence. I glance around, then quickly stop myself. Don’t act suspicious. Don’t act like you’re looking for anything. That’s the fastest way to get someone to hand you a mirror.
I sit behind my desk and pretend to go through routine admin. But my thoughts are still back in that dimly lit meeting room, looping like a skipping record .
“You’ve done well, Seraphina. Leave Rook alone now. Focus on the future.”
Translation: Stop digging up the past. Which means it’s buried right beneath my feet.
I open the Blackdawn internal server and pull up a list of recently reassigned employees. I tell myself it’s routine. Efficiency audit. Departmental review. Something professional. But my pulse kicks up as the screen loads.
The names don’t matter—yet. What matters is the pattern .
Two names stand out. I recognize them. Not from face-to-face meetings, but because they were in Rook’s orbit. Not close. But adjacent enough to be noticed. One was reassigned to satellite operations in Montreal. The other… disappeared entirely from the roster. No transfer. No HR memo. Just—gone.
I flag both entries and move on before the system timestamps me for too long on one page.
Click. Click. Click. Surface-level searches only. I don’t go deep. Not yet.
Don’t be obvious, I remind myself. Let them think you listened.
I open a spreadsheet, copy a few empty cells, and paste them into an email draft I won’t send.
Just so I look busy. Then, almost without thinking, I open the internal database again and request a flagged file.
One I shouldn’t need. One that requires executive clearance.
It’s nothing vital—just a quarterly report on asset reallocations in the outposts .
I hit "Enter." I wait.
Seven minutes later, there's a knock at my door.
Too fast.
I school my features, call out, “Yes?”
It's Clarissa from HR, smiling too wide, holding a tablet.
“I just needed your signature on the updated non-compete policy. We're standardizing the language for all upper management—legal's been on a tear about it.”
Of course they have.
I sign without comment. She lingers. I offer a tight smile and go back to my screen. Eventually, she leaves.
I count to twenty before exhaling.
They’re watching.
Which means I’m close.
I shut the system down, lean back in my chair, and stare out at the skyline. The reflection in the glass shows me sitting still, unreadable.
That’s what they’ll see. That’s all they’ll see.
But inside, I’m already moving.
This isn’t about Rook anymore. It never really was. This is about the rot. The black threads that weave through this empire, tying me down, binding me with silk and steel.
I won’t cut them yet.
First, I’ll trace every thread. I’ll find the knots. And when I’m ready— I’ll pull.
Hard enough to unravel the whole goddamn tapestry.
The elevator opens directly into the penthouse.
No fingerprints. No keycard. Just a retinal scan and a coded voice phrase. Blackdawn insisted on it. They called it “a gift.” I call it a cage with a better view.
I drop my bag onto the entry table, kick off my heels, and let the silence wrap around me.
This place was decorated by a designer who thought clean lines equaled peace of mind. Marble floors, black accents, glass walls. A minimalist dream. Cold. Impeccable. Like me.
But I’ve made… adjustments .
There’s a throw blanket in the corner that doesn’t match anything—soft and threadbare, the color of oversteeped tea. I stole it from my childhood home before they razed it to make room for “Blackdawn expansion.” Dominic said it was sentimental. I said it was bullshit. I took the blanket anyway .
There are also mugs that don’t belong here—mismatched ceramics, chipped on the edges, none of them identical. I keep them in the cupboard behind the wine glasses. Hidden, but not gone.
I make my way to the kitchen. No takeout tonight. I need something real. Something mine .
I tie my hair up into a messy knot, shrug out of my blazer, and roll up my sleeves.
There’s something meditative about chopping garlic, the rhythm of the blade against the cutting board, the way the smell clings to your skin.
I dice it fine, toss it in a hot pan with olive oil, then reach for pasta.
Twenty minutes later, I’m barefoot, cross-legged on the couch, eating spaghetti out of a deep bowl and watching my security feed on mute. A glass of wine sweats beside me. I haven’t touched it yet.
On the screen, there’s footage from the Blackdawn lobby, the employee entrance, and three other angles they don’t know I have access to. I watch the timestamp tick by, frame by frame.
13:07:42 — Clarissa exits HR with a folder. 13:07:47 — She pauses outside my office door. 13:07:49 — She smiles. 13:07:50 — She knocks.
I rewind. Again. There it is.
That moment just before the knock—when her expression drops . Her smile vanishes for a breath, and something in her eyes flickers .
Fear? No. Anticipation.
I make a mental note.
Then I pull my laptop onto my lap, slide the bowl aside, and open the secure shell buried behind layers of synthetic traffic.
Someone I trusted once taught me how to access it, back when I still believed there were people inside Blackdawn who didn’t just wear masks—they peeled theirs off sometimes too. I told them I never used it.
I lied.
I run a trace on the two names I flagged earlier. No internal records. No forwarding employment contracts. But one of them—Nora Vensik—was issued an internal ID badge two days after her removal. Not in Montreal. In Facility E .
Facility E doesn’t exist on any public blueprint. But I know where it is.
And now I know I’m going.
I eat another bite of pasta, slower this time. The sauce is spicy enough to make my lips tingle. I welcome it. It reminds me I’m alive.
In this penthouse, in this moment, I’m not Seraphina Vex—Director of Global Compliance, daughter of a man who built an empire on silence. I’m just a woman with garlic on her fingers and too many locked doors in her mind.
But I’m unlocking them now. One by one.
And when I find the door Dominic doesn’t want me to open—I won’t knock. I’ll blow it off the hinges.
The moment I see the location tag on the falsified badge, something in my chest coils tight.
Facility E.
Officially, it doesn’t exist. No registered security protocols. No networked devices. No employee entries. Not even a Blackdawn letterhead file that dares whisper its name.
Which means it matters. Which means it’s protected. And anything that protected is always worth tearing into.
I carry my laptop into the study. It’s the one room in the penthouse that doesn’t echo.
Dark oak shelves line the walls, filled with books I’ve actually read.
A decanter of whiskey I don’t drink sits on the edge of a desk I do use.
The chair behind it isn’t ergonomic. It’s heavy, old, creaky—and grounding.
I flip open a false-bottom drawer and pull out a burner device—unregistered, untraceable, air-gapped from everything Blackdawn ever touched.
I boot it up.
While the machine whirs quietly to life, I scribble a list in the notebook tucked beside it. Ink, not keystrokes. Some things are too dangerous to leave to the digital. Especially now.
● Facility E: location (Québec jurisdiction – outskirts?)
● Nora Vensik - transferred? detained?
● Access: who’s been there in last 6 months
● Entry points (supply? maintenance? staff rotation?)
● Evac routes — mine and theirs
● Surveillance drones - avoid or repurpose?
I pause, then underlin e mine and theirs twice.
This isn’t curiosity anymore. It’s contingency.
I start scrubbing the satellite logs for aerial mapping of the area—old utility routes, outdated geological surveys, even decommissioned military schematics Blackdawn doesn’t bother to purge from its archives.
There’s no direct feed of Facility E, but there’s a dead zone—four square miles where no drone footage has ever passed.
And the land records for that grid are locked behind a Level 7 clearance.
I have Level 6.
That’s enough to get me in the front gate of any international site.
It’s not enough for this.
I sit back, chewing absently on the edge of my pen. Another unguarded habit. Another piece of humanity I hide when I’m not alone.
There’s only one way to get Level 7 access.
The name flickers across my thoughts like a match struck in a pitch-black room.
Kellen Raye.
Dominic’s right hand. The man who delivers the decisions Dominic is too civilized to voice. He’s a sadist wrapped in a three-piece suit. A whisper away from feral. And he has exactly what I need.
The problem is: Kellen doesn’t give anything for free.
And if I go to him, he’ll know I’m playing a game. He’ll smell the disobedience under my perfume.
But the thing about Kellen is—he likes it when I disobey. He likes to see how far I’ll push before I shatter.
I close the notebook slowly. The decision is already made.
I’ll go to him.
And he’ll give me what I need… or I’ll take it.
The penthouse hums with quiet again. I rise from the chair, stretch the tension from my shoulders, and pad barefoot to the floor-to-ceiling windows.
The city glitters beneath me, unaware. Above it all, I’m the queen in a castle built by ghosts. But the moat is draining. The guards are sleeping.
And I’m finally making my move.