The thing about graves?
They lie.
Just like Grace Vance had lied to Alina her entire life.
“I buried her,” Alina whispered, staring at the flickering surveillance feed Camille had decrypted. “That was her casket.”
“That was her decoy,” Camille muttered, tapping rapidly on the keys. “The real Grace Vance vanished months before that funeral. Someone else’s body was burned. Dental records were faked.”
Nicholas paced behind her, shirt half-buttoned, bruises on his neck from the night before. “Why resurface now?”
“She didn’t,” Camille said. “She never disappeared. She went underground. She’s the architect. Echo. The leaks. The board takedown.”
Alina couldn’t breathe.
Her mother hadn’t died.
She had orchestrated every piece of this nightmare from the shadows.
The footage played again.
