The first forty-eight hours at Blackwood Industries were a blur of focused intensity. Victor had given me a temporary corporate apartment—a sleek, minimalist space on the fifty-second floor with a view that made the city look like a circuit board—and a team of his best engineers. They were sharp, hungry, and looked at me with a mixture of awe and professional curiosity. They didn’t see a woman scorned; they saw the mind that built AURA. For the first time in years, I wasn’t Liam’s supportive partner or a ghost in the machine. I was simply Chloe Rose, Chief Architect.
I worked with a clarity I hadn’t felt since my doctoral program. The Prometheus Core was my native language, and now, freed from the constraints of Liam’s commercial compromises, I began to expand it, to weave in the more com
