Chapter 90 - The Shadow in the Mirror
Three months later, the private wedding at Ravenscar Bluff was small, radiant, and filled with quiet joy. Only a dozen people stood on the manicured lawn overlooking the Atlantic: my mother, smiling with pure warmth; Julian Harrow, looking relaxed in an understated linen suit; Detective Miller, who had officially retired from the force to head the foundation’s investigative board; and a few true friends who had never known the toxic reach of Arthur Thorne.
When Liam held me during our first dance beneath the fairy lights strung through the cedar arbor, I felt an overwhelming sense of closure. The past had been buried beneath truth and justice.
Late that night, after the guests had departed down the coastal highway, Liam went downstairs to lock the patio doors and turn off the terrace lights. I stood in front of the antique vanity in our bedroom, unpinning the lace veil from my hair. The platinum band on my finger caught the moonlight streaming through the open French balcony.
The summer breeze was warm, carrying the soothing, rhythmic crash of the waves against the cliffs below.
Then, the antique brass house phone on the bedside table rang.
It wasn't an encrypted burner. It wasn't a satellite line. It was the hardwired landline of Ravenscar Bluff—a private, unlisted copper wire that Arthur Thorne had installed in 1982, a number known to only three living human beings on the planet.
My pulse skipped a single, violent beat.
I slowly set down the veil on the polished mahogany table and walked toward the nightstand. The brass receiver felt freezing cold in my hand as I lifted it to my ear.
"Hello?" I whispered.
A low, mechanical hum echoed across the static of the line, followed by the slow, familiar intake of a breath that made the blood freeze inside my veins.
"You really thought the Council was only run by old women and dead men, didn't you, little sister?"
The voice on the other end was not Arthur. It was not Eleanor.
It was a voice I had not heard in twenty-four years—a voice that had allegedly drowned in a capsized sailboat off the coast of Nantucket when I was barely seven years old.
The voice of Victoria Thorne.
May you like
"The wedding looked lovely through my scope, Maya," the woman’s voice purred with razor-sharp amusement. "Arthur took the fall just like I planned. Now, take a look at the coordinates I just painted on your bedroom window."
Before I could breathe, a tiny, crimson laser dot materialized on the glass of the balcony door, drifting slowly across the lace curtains until it settled dead-center over my chest.
