LISA’S POV
I didn’t sleep.
Not even a second.
By the time the sun stretched across my penthouse windows, I’d watched the video of Celeste Whitmore thirteen times—each frame a scalpel carving open old wounds.
She wasn’t just alive.
She was back.
And she had timed her return like a venomous queen laying siege.
I poured myself coffee with trembling hands. Black. Bitter. Like the memories clawing their way back.
My phone buzzed with alerts—news articles, whispers of stocks being manipulated, corporate board members resigning. The empire I’d rebuilt from ashes was being lit on fire again. But this time... from within.
And it all traced back to her.
Celeste Whitmore—the woman who mentored my father and then orchestrated his downfall. The same woman who vanished the night he died.
Now,
