No One Owns Me

Chapter 30 — No More Running

The wood splinters, and the door slams fully open.

“CASEY!”

I’d know that voice anywhere. Ward stumbles through the gap, chest heaving, eyes wild until they land straight on me. For a heartbeat he freezes, scanning me from head to toe like he’s checking every bone.

“Are you hurt?”

I shake my head, stepping forward. “No. I’m okay.”

He closes the distance in two strides, then stops just short of touching me, like he’s scared I’ll vanish if he blinks. Only when I reach out and wrap my fingers around his wrist does he let out a breath so deep his shoulders drop. Then he glances past me at Daniel, jaw tightening.

“What the hell happened down here?”

Daniel leans against the wall, worn out, but doesn’t flinch. “She needed the truth. No one else would give it to her.”

I pull my father’s letter from my jacket, the paper still soft from being folded so many times. “He showed me what Dad left. And who really betrayed him.”

Duncan pushes through after Ward. His eyes lock on the letter, and his face goes pale. “You found it.”

“Dad knew Lorenzo gave the order to kill him.” I look straight at him. “And you knew too. You suspected, at least.”

Duncan nods slowly, his voice rough. “Your father told me what he’d found. Made me swear not to tell you until you were ready—until you could fight it without letting anger blind you.”

“Everyone keeps making promises for me,” I say, but there’s no bite left in it. Just tiredness.

“I know.” He meets my eyes, and I see the guilt there, raw and unhidden. “And I was wrong to keep that from you. I’m sorry.”

Before I can answer, Isabella comes darting through the passage. The second she sees me she throws her arms around my neck, clinging tight enough to bruise.

“I thought I’d lost you in the dark. I thought—”

“I’m here,” I promise, holding her just as tight. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Ward stands a little way back, watching, and when I look over at him I mouth thank you. He gives the faintest shake of his head, but his eyes soften.

“Whatever comes,” he says quietly, “I’m right here.”

Drake’s voice cuts through the quiet. “We can’t stay. If Lorenzo’s men don’t come back, others will. We need to move.”

We don’t argue. We file out through the tunnel’s far exit, climb into the waiting vehicles, and drive away in silence. I sit pressed against Ward’s shoulder, watching the old house shrink into the dark in the rear-view mirror. Once I thought that place held only ghosts and pain. Now I know it held the only truth I ever needed.

Ward glances sideways at me as he drives. “You okay?”

I look down at the letter in my lap. “Not yet. But I will be.”

He huffs a quiet laugh. “That’s the most honest thing you’ve said all day.”

I smile, and for the first time in weeks it doesn’t feel forced.

I trace my father’s handwriting again: You don’t have to inherit my fight. You only have to choose your own.

For seventeen years, everyone has told me what I am: the heir, the target, the girl who needs protecting. But this is my choice. No more running from what they want me to be. No more letting them write my story.

Back at the clubhouse, Drake spreads large maps and surveillance photos across the main table. Everyone gathers around.

“This is it,” he says, tapping a shot of a massive, windowless concrete building ringed by high fences and watchtowers. “The Crown’s central headquarters. They’ve operated out of here for ten years. No one’s gotten past the outer gates and come back.”

I lean in. “Dad got inside, didn’t he?”

Drake nods grimly. “He breached the perimeter security. Got through the first three checkpoints. But he never reached the inner vault.”

“What was in there?”

“Everything.” He looks up at me. “Every name, every deal, every account, every piece of evidence that would burn the whole Crown to the ground. And the other two registers—the ones your father hid before he died.”

My hand closes around the leather book I carried from the cottage. “That’s what they’ve been chasing all this time. Not just an heir. Control of the proof.”

“And if we get into that vault,” Duncan says slowly, “we don’t just stop them. We dismantle them. Forever.”

Silence settles over the room. Heavy, bright, charged.

Duncan turns to me. “You don’t have to be the one to walk through that door, Casey.”

“Yes I do.” I tap my father’s letter gently. “He spent his whole life fighting to give people a way out. I’m not going to spend mine running from the people who took that chance away.”

Isabella laces her fingers through mine. “You won’t go alone.”

Ward rests his hand on the table beside me, steady as stone. “Never.”

Duncan looks between all of us—at the resolve in my face, the loyalty in Ward’s, the courage in Isabella’s—and finally nods.

“Then we do this right,” he says. “We plan. We prepare. We hit them where they’re weakest.”

Drake slides a final photo onto the pile. “Tomorrow night. The security rotation changes. It’s our only window.”

I stare at the fortress, at the walls built to keep secrets in and people out. They think I’m still the girl who runs. They think I’m still the girl who hides.

They’re wrong.

Tomorrow night, we walk through their front door. And this time, I’m not just fighting for my life. I’m fighting to burn down every lie they ever told.