Return Of The Fallen Billionaire Heiress.

Chapter Four

The Digital Wipe and the Secret Seed

​Vionna’s POV

​I woke up with my head throbbing and my body feeling like it had been crushed under a weight, and it took me a moment to realize I was lying in a hotel bed that smelled like expensive cologne and woodsmoke. I rolled over and saw that the other side of the mattress was cold, and the man from the bar was gone without leaving so much as a note, but then I spotted a slip of paper resting on the bedside table. I reached for it and saw it was a blank check with the Crest family seal at the top, and the sight of it made me want to scream because even after everything, they still thought I was just something they could pay to go away.

​"You think this makes us even, you arrogant bastard," I muttered, but I didn't tear it up, I just set it aside and grabbed my laptop because I had a different kind of payment in mind.

​I sat at the desk and my fingers started moving across the keys as I broke into the university’s main server, and I didn't stop until I found every single file related to my scholarship and the photos Rhea had leaked. I didn't just delete them, I overwrote the data so many times that not even a professional forensic team could recover them, and then I moved on to the city’s public records to scrub my name from every database. By the time I was done, Vionna Adrienne Thorne the scholarship student didn't exist anymore, and I felt a strange sense of relief as I packed my bag and walked out of that room without looking back at the check.

​I took a car to the private airport where the Thorne family jet was already fueled up, and I saw Xandros and Lysithea standing by the steps with looks on their faces that told me they were ready to kill someone for me.

​"You’re late, and you look like you’ve been dragged through the mud, but at least you’re finally here so we can leave this trash heap of a city," Xandros said, his voice hard as he looked at the bruise on my forehead.

​"I had to finish my business, and I don't want to hear another word about it, so just get me on that plane before I change my mind and burn the school down myself," I replied, walking past him into the cabin and dropping into one of the leather seats.

​"Everything is handled, and your new life in Zurich is already set up, so you can spend the next few years becoming the person you were always meant to be," Lysithea said, sitting across from me and handing me a tablet with my new identity documents.

​"I’m going to become the person they fear the most, Lysithea, and when I come back, Julian and Rhea won't even see me coming," I told her, and I watched through the window as the ground fell away and the city became nothing more than a memory in the clouds.

​Five years later, the quiet of my office in Zurich was broken by the sound of small feet running across the hardwood floors, and I looked up from my monitors just in time to see three toddlers burst through the door.

​"Mama, Soren won't let me play with the drone and he says it's because I don't know how to calibrate the sensors," Lyra complained, huffing as she crossed her arms and looked at her brother who was walking in behind her with a serious expression.

​"I was just trying to make sure she didn't crash it into the window again, and besides, the software needed an update anyway," Soren said, and he looked at me with those cold, silver-grey eyes that were an exact match for the man I had met in that bar five years ago.

​"Soren, give your sister the controller, and Kaelen, stop trying to take apart the printer before your aunt Lysithea sees you," I said, pointing to my other son who was already reaching for the wires behind my desk. They were all so brilliant and so much like their father that it sometimes hurt to look at them, but they were my reason for everything I had built in this new life.

​"Vionna, we have a problem that you’re actually going to love," Lysithea said as she walked into the room, holding a phone that was blinking with a high-priority alert.

​"Is it about the merger?" I asked, pushing my chair back while the kids went back to their corner to argue over the drone.

​"Julian is desperate, and he just submitted a proposal to our front company asking for a massive investment to save his logistics firm from bankruptcy," she explained, and a slow, cold smile spread across my face as I looked at the digital documents.

​"He wants my money to save the life he built by stepping on me, and he doesn't even realize that I’m the one who’s been squeezing his supply lines for the last six months," I said, and the anger I had kept locked away for five years started to hum in my veins.

​"Rhea is pushing him to close the deal quickly so they can finally have their big society wedding, and she’s been bragging to everyone that they’re about to become international players," Lysithea added, and she looked at me with a knowing glint in her eyes.

​"Then let's give them exactly what they want, and let's make sure the meeting is set for next week in the city, because I want to be there in person to sign the papers that will officially own every single thing they have," I told her, and as I looked at my children playing on the floor, I knew that the reckoning I had promised Julian was finally here.