Chapter 23
YARA
Tidball resurfaces like a roach that’s learned how to crawl beneath a different kind of skin—alive, somehow, but ruined. The shadow of who he once was, stripped of polish and posture, now a specter with nothing left to barter but stories and a twitching, desperate smile.
The Combine isn’t stupid.
And I’m not that girl anymore.
I could’ve crushed him in secret. Buried him behind blackmail and bulletproof files. But this time, I want the world to see.
So I call the conference myself.
No leaks. No whispers.
I take the Combine’s biggest media hall—the one reserved for peace treaties and acquisitions so massive they change interstellar shipping routes. I wear black again. Not soft silk. Armored crepe. Shoulders sharp enough to slice steel.
Grau is at the back. Watching.
Not guarding.
Watching.
He knows this one’s mine.
When I step out onto that stage, the room pulses. Hundreds of drones hover above the crowd, streaming live to every feed that matters. Delegates. Executives. Former allies. Even the heads of factions who once called me naive. They’re all here.
The press corps leans forward like vultures.
I look directly into the lens.
“I have one thing to say about Marcus Tidball.”
No stammer.
No preamble.
Just fire.
“He taught me many things. How to read a contract. How to spot a betrayal before it’s finished slithering out of its suit. How to smile while twisting a knife.”
A few reporters shift uncomfortably.
“He did not teach me leadership. Or strategy. Or honor. Everything I am today, I learned by surviving him.”
I pause.
Then I flick my hand.
A projection blazes into existence behind me—a rotating file set stamped CY8 classified, watermark verified. I step aside and let the footage play.
Transaction records. Forged votes. Recorded meetings where my name was slandered in service of backroom deals. Data dumps so thick the Combine’s own council auditors had to invent new categories to catalog the violations.
And finally, the blow that breaks the last of the room’s doubt—an internal memo from Tidball himself, dated before my father’s death, outlining how CY8’s future without “emotional liabilities” would be streamlined for profit.
The crowd gasps.
I let the silence hang.
Then I say, voice low and unshakable, “Marcus Tidball built his empire on my father’s back. He tried to claim mine as inheritance.”
Someone asks, too loudly, “What happens now?”
I smile then.
A real one.
The doors to the chamber open.
Four corporate enforcement agents walk in, expressionless and efficient. They head straight for the back row, where a gaunt, pale man is already pushing to stand.
He’s in a cheap suit now. Hands trembling. Hair disheveled. The mask has fallen off, and what’s underneath is pathetic.
He tries to speak.
No one listens.
They cuff him.
Not violently.
Surgically.
And as he’s escorted past me, I catch his eye.
“Everything you taught me,” I say softly, “I unlearned. And everything you tried to steal—I took back.”
He doesn’t speak.
Just stares like he’s seeing me for the first time.
Let him.
Let the world.
I step off the podium, not to applause, but to silence.
Respect.
Fear.
Something new.
And when Grau joins me, doesn’t speak, just places one hand lightly on my back, I don’t lean in. Don’t falter.
I nod once.
Then walk off into the future I built.
One signature. One takedown. At a time.
The holding facility smells like recirculated air, stale coffee, and regret.
It’s sanitized, sterile, everything wrapped in layers of fake civility, but I know better.
The walls hum with static. Cameras track my every step.
The guards don’t bother hiding their curiosity as I’m escorted down a too-bright corridor lined with reinforced glass cells.
He’s in the last one.
Jonathan Tidball.
Once a king in this world, now nothing more than a man in a beige jumpsuit that does nothing to hide the tremor in his hands.
He sits with the precision of someone trying to appear calm, but his eyes twitch when he sees me, flicking to the guards, then back to my face.
There’s an awful sort of hope in his expression, the desperate kind.
The kind that thinks maybe the past still holds power.
“Yara.” His voice catches on my name like it’s a hook. “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
“I wasn’t either.” I don’t sit.
He stands. Slowly. Like he wants to close the distance between us, but something in my face warns him off. Good.
“You look…” he trails off, the wrong smile tugging at his face, the kind that once charmed senators and sliced contracts wide open. “You’ve become quite the woman.”
“I became someone you never wanted me to be.”
His face flickers. “That’s not true. I—I always believed in you. You were like a daughter—”
“Don’t.” The word comes out like stone. “Don’t insult what little clarity you have left.”
Tidball presses a hand to the glass between us, as if that gesture still holds meaning. “Yara, please. You’re angry. I understand. But this isn’t who you are. You’re better than—”
“I’m exactly who I am.” I step closer, voice dropping low. “And you, Jonathan, made sure I’d never forget who I had to become.”
He swallows. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“No, I finally do.”
There’s a pause, a hitch in his breathing.
“You came to gloat, then?” he asks, bitterness bleeding through the cracks.
“No.” I take a breath, slow and deliberate. “I came to thank you.”
His eyebrows shoot up.
“If you hadn’t tried to break me,” I continue, “I might’ve stayed small. Safe. Controlled. I might’ve died in a gilded cage you wrapped in praise and lies.”
“I protected you.”
“You groomed me.”
Silence.
“You used my grief. My legacy. My name. You taught me to smile while bleeding.” I lean in slightly. “But you taught me, Jonathan. You taught me. And I turned it on you.”
He’s pale now. Deflated. All the charm, the polish—gone.
“You’ll never see the outside of a penal colony,” I say. “You’ll rot in a hole the Combine forgets exists. But I’ll remember.”
He opens his mouth again, to beg maybe, or bargain. I don’t let him.
“I’m not here to forgive you. I’m not here for closure.” I tilt my head. “I just wanted you to know that the girl who called you ‘uncle’ is dead. And the woman who replaced her doesn’t need your ghost hanging over her shoulder.”
He finally sits back down.
No fight left.
No power.
Just a man.
“Goodbye, Jonathan.”
I walk out without looking back.
The sun outside is blinding, warm in that aggressive Helios way that never really feels gentle—but today, it kisses my skin like absolution.
And there he is.
Grau.
Leaning against the speeder, arms crossed over that broad chest, sunglasses slung low enough that I can see the glint in his eyes. That smirk, all wicked confidence and quiet victory.
“Was it everything you hoped it’d be?” he drawls.
“No.” I grin. “It was better.”
He opens the door for me like a gentleman out of time. I slide in, still vibrating with clarity.
As the doors close behind us, I exhale a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.
I’m not afraid anymore.
Not of Jonathan.
Not of what I had to become.
Not of who I love.
Grau starts the engine. The speeder lifts, the city falling away beneath us.
I look down one last time.
And I know, deep in my bones, that Jonathan Tidball will never touch my life again.
Not now.
Not ever.
Because I burned the bridge.
And salted the earth behind me.
And in the ruins, I finally found myself.