Chapter 7
1028 Words
CHAPTER SEVEN
Luna's POV
There was a saying in the Knight family: Legacy first, love never.
Luna used to wear it like armor.
But tonight, it felt like a curse.
She stood in her father’s private office — the one no assistant had the key to, no cameras watched, and no one but he and her mother were ever allowed inside. It smelled like cedarwood and ambition. Like secrets sealed in Italian leather.
She wasn’t supposed to be here. But after the forged embezzlement file slid across that boardroom table, after Cassian admitted he knew about it and said nothing, after the war she’d tried to keep at bay began bleeding into her skin — she knew she couldn’t wait for the truth to find her.
She had to take it.
She picked the lock in under a minute. Learned from a French hacker she paid off during a press scandal three years ago. Her father would be proud if he weren’t the one she was hunting.
The desk was a fortress. Locked. Trapped. But the safe — embedded in the back wall, behind the massive oil painting of the Knight vineyard — was older than the lies it held.
She pressed her thumb to the scanner. No access.
But her father had made one mistake.
He’d taught her everything.
The override code was her birthday. Not the real one — the one printed on the falsified documents after her mother miscarried the first child. Luna had always been a replacement. She just learned how to play the part better than anyone expected.
The safe clicked open.
And inside, nestled between old contracts and forged shell company logs, was a single red file.
No label. No branding.
Just her name handwritten across the front: Aurelia Éli Knight
Her stomach dropped.
She opened it.
And the world unraveled.
It was all there.
Documents dating back sixteen years. A hidden deal between Knight Conglomerate and Laurel Tech’s arms division — long before Cassian was old enough to touch a boardroom chair. Backdoor trades. Covert funds. Military tech passed through luxury shell brands. All with clean facades and falsified exports.
Her father and Steven Laurel… had once been partners.
Not enemies.
All this time — the public feud, the corporate rivalry, the stories of betrayal and sabotage — it had been manufactured. A cover.
A cold, calculated performance to disguise a joint empire built in shadows.
But it didn’t stop there.
There was a letter.
A personal one. Dated nine months before Luna’s birth.
Written in her father’s handwriting.
She unfolded it slowly, like it might scream if she rushed.
> To Steven,
She doesn’t know, and she can’t. The child will bear my name, but the deal is final. She is the guarantee. If anything happens — if your son fails, if you fail — the Knight girl is my collateral. You protect the trade. You protect the girl. The war must remain a story. The money must not stop. We both get what we want.
— L.
Luna’s heart turned to ice.
She was the leverage.
She wasn’t just part of a family legacy — she was the legacy. The living pawn. A breathing bond in a contract between two men who never cared about her life, only her value.
All her life, she had been trained to lead.
To fight.
To win.
But never to choose.
Because her path was already written — not in ink, but in blood and blackmail.
She backed away from the safe, the letter clutched in one shaking hand.
So Cassian hadn’t been her enemy.
Not truly.
They were both victims of an older war — one that had never been about rivalry.
It had always been about control.
Her father’s voice echoed in her head: Emotions are weapons. Never draw one unless you’re ready to kill.
She wasn’t ready.
Not for this.
Not for the realization that everything — even her — had been engineered.
Her phone buzzed.
Cassian.
She stared at the screen.
Did he know? Did he know they were born into the same cage? Did he know that loving her wasn’t forbidden, but planned?
She let it ring.
Let it go silent.
Then, finally, she texted:
“Come to me. No bodyguards. No lies.”
Twenty-nine minutes later, Cassian stepped into her penthouse. Unarmed. Alone.
He looked tired. Older. Worn in a way that money couldn’t smooth over.
She didn’t speak at first. Just watched him.
Watched the man she loved and questioned whether she had ever really known him at all.
“You found something,” he said softly.
She held out the file.
He read it. Page by page.
Didn’t speak.
Didn’t blink.
Just… absorbed it.
When he reached the letter, he paused.
Luna’s voice broke the silence. “Did you know?”
His head lifted. “No. Not all of it. I knew our fathers had a deal once. My mother hinted at it before she died. But I thought it was dead. I thought we were real.”
Her voice cracked. “We’re not real, Cassian. We’re part of their strategy.”
He closed the file. Walked to her slowly.
But Luna stepped back. “Don’t.”
“I didn’t choose that deal. I didn’t choose them.”
“No. But you still let me walk blind.”
“I didn’t know you were the price.”
“And now that you do?”
Cassian’s eyes burned. “Now I want to burn the entire contract.”
She wanted to believe him. God, she wanted it to be that simple.
But nothing was simple anymore.
She turned away, tears threatening — the first real ones in years.
“What are we supposed to do, Cassian?” she whispered. “We were never supposed to love each other. We were supposed to destroy each other.”
He came behind her, gently, hands resting on her arms.
“Then let’s do both,” he said.
She turned, stunned.
His voice was low. Lethal. “Let’s destroy everything they built. Together.”
And for the first time, Luna didn’t feel like a pawn.
She felt like a queen.
- Writer
