Vengeance in velvet

Seraphina’s POV No one washes anything because of the rain in this city. It washes away dirt into the gutters, and turns the pavement slippery enough for a car to skid off the edge of a cliff. I know, eighteen months ago I was driving inside the car. I laid my hand against the tinted windows of a black car, gazing at the electric pink and gold neon signs of the financial district becoming streaked. Steady and relentless, the rain hammered against the windshield, like a heartbeat, fast, erratic and choking. Eighteen months. Five hundred and forty seven days of excruciating skin grafts, bone setting surgeries and physical therapy. Five hundred and forty seven days of me screaming in my pillow so the nurses didn't write down that I was mentally unstable. Five hundred and forty-seven days of hiding a face behind the veil of lies, hiding a heart in the shadowy corners of Blackwood Ravine.Five hundred and forty-seven days of wardening a heart in a shadowy corner of Blackwood Ravine, wardening a face behind a veil of lies. We’ve got the perimeter clear, ma'am. The car was quiet in the back as Marcus's voice broke the silence. Smooth, gravelly and without a whiff of panic. No tail, no surveillance, the city still considers you to be six feet under. "Good," I murmured. Now my voice was different. Deeper. This was because the smoke that had galled my lungs that night, and then smoothed by months of conscious vocal training. “Let them continue to purchase their own fable.” I tugged down the dark trench coat that covered my head, traced my fingers across the left side of my jaw, down to my collarbone. Beneath the suede silk of my blouse was the real map of my past: an irregular line of pale, silver skin, which extended down past my ribs. It was a scar that I'd had put on me by Damian. Damian, and my former “sister,” the girl. I closed my eyes and immediately I could smell the burning gasoline and roasted flesh flooding my lungs. “I’m sorry, Phina,” My eyelids were filled with darkness, and behind it Damian's voice was smooth as velvet, cold as ice. I still remember his hazel eyes glinting on the dashboard just before he shoved the gear stick into drive and stepped out of his vehicle. “You’re just too expensive to keep alive. But Helena...she really does know how to make me laugh. Then came the laugh of Helena: light and melodic, the laugh of a girl who had shared my dollhouse, eaten at my father's dinner table, and worn my outgrown clothes, until one day, she decided to take my inheritance. I recalled the violent roll over the barrier of the car. The hours and hours of being weightless. The grinding of metal to the granite. The heat god, the infernal, suffocating heat as the engine block exploded. I recalled pushing on the packed seatbelt until my nails pulled out and the blood started to seep in through the buckle until my dismembered body was being dragged through the broken driver's window just seconds before the gas tank blew up. I didn't die that night. The girl who believed in people was dead. In that ravine, the girl who believed in love, loyalty, and sisterhood, was burned to ash. This Maybach's residence in the rear was something else. Marcus said, "We're coming into the penthouse, Seraphina," as he put the car in park inside the underground garage of the Apex Tower. It was a ghost building: a private offshore trust I'd established a few years ago, way before I ever got a ring on my finger, from Damian. Have you got any news about the market? I asked, exiting the car. The ten-inch stiletto heels that I had on my feet clacked against the polished concrete floor, echoing a countdown to an execution. Thorne Industries' stock has increased by four percent today, Marcus said, he walked half a step behind, hand on his hidden holster. In fact, the press is calling Damian ‘a visionary'. He's cutting the old research arm of your father's business tomorrow morning so he can pay for his new real estate merger. There was a cold bitter smile on my lips, but it failed to reach my eyes. He feels he is selling my father's legacy," said the man. He doesn't know I'm merely shuffling around the pieces just where I want them. We went in the private elevators. I picked up a biometric keycard and the glass cab shot off into the air for fifty floors above the rain-soaked city. The doors opened and there was the high rise penthouse, a fortress of matte black steel, minimalist glass, and wall to wall monitors already pumping with live feeds of the financial world, security wiretaps and corporate dossiers. I walked towards the window that looked out to the city where the ceiling to the floor was all made of glass. There they were, in that place, surrounded by sparkling lights, where the tall buildings reach up to the sky, where Damian and Helena were drinking crystal champagne in my old castle, and sleeping in my old bed, my father's money spent. The thought that they were winners had crossed their minds. It was their belief that the dead remained buried. I picked up the crystal decanter on the marble console, and poured myself two fingers of neat scotch. The amber liquid burned down my throat and left me grounded, the imaginary frost of the rain gone. "Marcus," Staring out at the sign of Thorne Industries that was lit up, I said softly, “Turn on the network, hereby we start Phase One.” "Right away, ma'am. But what about Julian Vance? As if a dense and threatening fog hung in the air. Julian Vance. Global Venture Capital "Shadow King. In the boardroom, the name of a man causes the heads of hardfaced CEOs to break into a sweat. My ex-fiancé's most vicious and ruthless business competitor, and the only guy in this country with enough economic clout to bring Damian down to the ground. “Julian is an apex predator,” I said as a droplet of water took a jagged path down the glass on the outside. He'll take me in and devour me if I go to him as a beggar. I have to join his world at his level. Or his nightmare." The security at Aethelgard Manor is top-notch, Seraphina. Passing it does not only difficult, it is also suicidal. “That was a blessing that I passed away eighteen months ago,” I said quietly. I was leaving the window and heading towards the master bedroom. As I walked by the middle console, however, there was a steel sounding alert that impelled me into silence. One of the secondary monitors lit up red. I stopped, my brow furrowed. It was a safe, encrypted, satellite stream attached to a covert tracking beacon I had placed on Damian's earth-bound personal car three hours after he landed in the city. Except it wasn't being sent from Damian's car. This was a high frequency incoming transmission signal. Not my offshore server, but directly to the private, unlisted terminal, in this very room. My heart was pounding on my ribs. This penthouse was unknown to anyone. I did not have anyone to know that I was in this city. I moved in closer to the screen. I stepped aside from the console, and Marcus opened the drawer of his sidearm, standing between me and the console, his back rigid. "Seraphina, get back. I have not allowed any incoming connections" - "Quiet," I breathed. I tapped the flashing red icon.I tapped the red flashing icon. The screen flickered. The digital noise faded and as it did, a line of bold, white text appeared over a black background. Not an automatic warning for the system. It was a message. ‘Welcome back to the city, my sweet ghost. We've been waiting eighteen months for your scotch! Aethelgard Manor. Midnight. Don't keep your husband waiting.’ Suddenly, my breath caught in my throat, and the crystal glass shook a little in my hand. He knew. Julian Vance wasn't just aware I was alive, but he knew. I think he was waiting for me.