Chapter 31
Seraphina
The room was dead silent. The only sound was the soft hum of the laptop and the thud of my heart crashing against my ribs.
My mother. Before I was born.
My throat was dry, but not with grief—grief would’ve made me soft. This was something sharper. Hotter.
Callum hadn’t said a word since I pointed her out. He stared at the screen, then at me, like he was trying to confirm what he already knew. Kieran leaned forward slowly, still as stone, eyes glued to the image like he could pull answers from the pixels.
But I already had mine.
“I’m going to burn it all down,” I said, voice barely above a whisper. “Every last piece of it. Dominic, his empire… everything they’ve touched.”
Callum’s eyes narrowed, jaw tightening like he was holding himself back from pulling me into him. But he knew. He knew I didn’t want comfort—I wanted vengeance.
Kieran’s voice came out low, a rough rasp. “That’s how I lost mine.”
I turned toward him. He was staring at the screen, eyes distant, lost in some dark memory he didn’t want to share—but couldn’t stop from spilling out.
“My mom… maybe even my sister,” he said. “They vanished. No trace. I was a kid, couldn’t do a damn thing. But I remember the way Dominic stopped talking about them. The silence. The guilt.”
I didn’t speak. I just listened. Let the pain in his voice thread into mine.
“I got into this to hurt them back,” he went on. “I didn’t care how. Didn’t even care if I died doing it. But this… seeing her. Knowing what they did to your mother… it’s a reminder. This isn’t over.”
He looked at me then, and for the first time, I saw something in his gaze that wasn’t cocky or clever. It was resolve.
“We’re going to finish it,” I said.
Callum pulled the laptop closer and began typing, eyes scanning faster now. “We need names. Faces. Statuses.”
Within minutes, he was building a list. Pulling from the drive’s data, matching it against known aliases, company records, and Blackdawn affiliates. Men who had smiled in public while buying girls like cattle in private. Politicians. Retired military. Private donors.
People still breathing. Still walking free.
“We hit them one by one. Clean. Loud. Untraceable.” Callum muttered.
“No.” I shook my head. “Not untraceable. I want them to know it was me.”
Callum glanced at me. I didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink.
A chime sounded—an encrypted message from Reaper. Callum opened it immediately .
“Follow-up?” I asked.
He nodded. “From Reaper. He pulled something else from the drive.”
My eyes narrowed. “What?”
He clicked the attachment and a text file opened, rows of coded logs filling the screen. At first, it was numbers. Then a list of names.
Export records.
Callum translated silently, muttering under his breath as he decrypted the code. “Dates, locations, asset numbers…”
He stopped. Scrolled. Then clicked to enlarge a section.
There, in clean digital lettering, were the words that made my stomach churn.
Asset: I.M. — transferred via marriage contract. No further correspondence.
Callum read it aloud, then turned slowly to me. “This is dated 26 years ago.”
My chest tightened. “That lines up. With when she got pregnant. With when she vanished.”
Kieran cursed under his breath.
Another file opened. This time, internal messages. From Dominic .
“She’s asking too many questions.” “She knows where the girls are being kept.” “Handle it. Quietly.”
I felt the blood drain from my face. Dominic hadn’t just purchased my mother—he’d silenced her. Buried her secrets with her body, or worse… kept her somewhere out of sight, out of reach.
“She might have tried to fight back,” I whispered. “She might have been one of the only ones who did.”
Callum’s hand hovered near mine. He didn’t touch me, but his presence was grounding.
“She could still be alive,” I said. “Or someone she confided in could be. Someone who knew her.”
“We’ll find them,” he said.
I nodded once. “I’m going to find out what happened to her. I don’t care how deep I have to dig.”
Kieran leaned back, but his eyes hadn’t left me. “Whatever you need,” he said. “I’m in.”
This wasn’t just about revenge anymore. It wasn’t even about justice.
It was about truth.
And burning everything built on lies until nothing but ash remained.
This isn’t just about taking Blackdawn down anymore. It’s personal.