CHAPTER FORTY-THREE: Too Late
Aria Vale
The skyline was smeared in gold and ash, the city glowing like it didn't know how close it was to collapse.
I stood barefoot in the penthouse Monarch gave me, steel, glass, and silence. From up here, the world looked small. Manageable. Like all it would take was one well-placed match and the whole machine would burn.
I poured a glass of scotch.
Didn't sip.
Didn't move.
Just stared at the dark window where my reflection didn't quite look like me anymore.
---
There was a knock at the door.
Three sharp raps.
I didn't need to ask who it was.
Jasper.
He strolled in without waiting for an answer, wearing black like a promise and smiling like he didn't mean it. He held a velvet box... Again.
I didn't move from the window. "Another trinket?"
"An upgrade," he said. "You've earned it."
He set it on the glass table, slow and deliberate.
"I already wear your leash," I said, twisting the onyx ring on my finger.
"Not a leash," Jasper replied. "A key."
I turned then. "To what?"
He just smiled.
That was the first warning.
The second came when I tasted the scotch again and the burn didn't feel right.
Too sweet. Too slow.
My vision blurred.
My knees buckled.
I caught myself on the edge of the couch, heart slamming against my ribs.
"You bastard," I breathed.
Jasper didn't move. Didn't flinch.
"Shh," he said, crouching before me. "Don't ruin it with dramatics."
The world tipped sideways. My limbs went heavy. The floor met my knees. I tried to reach for the knife taped beneath the coffee table but my fingers didn't work.
Not anymore.
Not fast enough.
Behind Jasper, the door opened again.
Everett entered.
Her heels clicked like metronomes of doom. She wore white tonight. I hated how pure it looked.
Aria Vale, dressed in vengeance and venom, paralyzed at their feet.
"This was inevitable," Everett said, circling me like I was already dead. "We can't afford question marks. Not with Wolfe circling the drain."
"I earned this seat," I hissed, slurring.
"You earned a role," Everett corrected, crouching down, voice low and warm like poison in tea. "But never a crown."
Hands lifted me—rough, impersonal. I tried to struggle. My muscles refused.
They strapped me to the dining chair. Not the kind used for torture. The kind used for ceremony.
Symbolism. Monarch's favorite drug.
Everett tilted my chin up.
"You wanted revenge?" she whispered. "You'll get it. Just not on your terms."
I stared at Jasper.
"You said you were done being moved."
He didn't smile this time.
"I was," he said. "But I never said you'd be the one to move me."
A gloved hand slipped the onyx ring from my finger.
Everett took it and slid it onto her own, right over black nail polish.
"You thought we'd let you lead us?" she said, stepping back, letting me see the truth of it—all of it.
The glass cage.
The false trust.
The stage built just to break me.
"No, Aria."
Her voice was final.
"You were just means to an end."
---
Damian Wolfe
It started with Bishop's voice.
Gravel-edged. Calm. Too calm.
> "She's been taken."
The air in the penthouse went still.
"Where?" I asked.
> "Sublevel compound under the Briarpoint Industrial District. Everett's people. She's initiating something she's calling a 'purge.' Aria's the opening act."
I didn't breathe.
Didn't speak.
My reflection stared back at me in the glass...suit, tie, monster.
"I want coordinates. I want eyes."
> "Already have both. But if we move fast, we burn every asset. Including the board."
"Then let it burn."
---
Ten minutes later, the boardroom was war.
Executives shouting.
Lawyers pacing.
One demanded a vote of no confidence.
I overrode them all.
"This is not a democracy," I said, voice like frostbite. "This is Wolfe Enterprise. My name is on the crown, and my father's blood built the walls."
"Vault 07 is protected under strict..."
"I own Vault 07."
They went quiet then.
Because Vault 07 wasn't just assets.
It was favors. Secrets. Debts owed by nations and nightmares alike.
And I was calling them all in.
---
The lock required two keys. Mine and my father's.
I kept his in a sealed drawer beneath my desk. A memento. A warning.
As I slid it into place, I remembered the first time I saw her.
Not Aria the threat. Not Aria the rebel.
Aria, seventeen, standing beside Alexander Vale at a summit she had no place attending.
Eyes like defiance. Mouth full of trouble.
She had laughed at something I said, mocked me.
And I remember thinking:
God help me, I want to know what makes you bleed.
I didn't realize then.
She already had.
Vault 07 opened with a hiss.
Inside: black files, ghost names, weapons that never made it past classified.
My father once called it our family's apocalypse insurance.
I took everything.
---
The next order was blood.
"Put a bounty on Everett Vale," I told Bishop. "Seven million. No safe harbor. No shadows to crawl into."
Bishop arched a brow. "Dead or alive?"
"Dead," I said.
"But keep her alive just long enough to watch it all fall."
Night had swallowed the city whole when the video arrived.
Anonymous number. No message.
Just the footage.
I watched it in the dark.
Aria. Shackled. Blood at her temple. Lip split.
Eyes dead.
Forced to speak words that didn't belong to her:
> "There's nothing left to save, Damian. Stay away."
A long pause.
No music.
No threat.
Just silence.
And then the screen went black.
I stood there, glass in hand, still as stone.
No fury. No plan.
Just one truth.
I whispered it into the quiet, to no one and everyone:
"Too late."