Chapter 4

Chapter 4

LUCIA POINT OF VIEW

The face in the mirror belongs to someone else.

Six weeks after surgery, the swelling is finally gone. The bruises have faded. What's left is a stranger with my voice and my memories.

Isabella Valen.

That's who I am now. That's who I have to be.

I trace the new lines of my face with fingertips that still feel foreign. The nose is smaller, more refined. My cheekbones sit higher, creating shadows that didn't exist before. Even my eyes look different, sharper somehow, like they're made of glass instead of flesh.

The soft girl who cried over love songs is gone.

In her place stands someone harder. Someone built for war.

"Ready?" Salome's voice comes from behind me.

I turn away from the mirror. She's standing in the doorway wearing a black suit that probably costs more than most people's cars. Her expression is unreadable, but there's something in her eyes that makes my spine straighten.

Pride, maybe. Or anticipation.

"Ready for what?"

"To see what you've inherited."

She leads me through her mansion, past rooms I've never been allowed to enter. Each door we pass feels like a revelation waiting to happen. My heart pounds against my ribs, but I keep my face calm.

Isabella doesn't get nervous. Isabella doesn't show weakness.

We stop at a elevator hidden behind what looks like a bookshelf. Salome presses her thumb to a scanner, and the doors slide open with a soft whisper.

"Going down," she says.

The elevator descends for what feels like forever. When it finally stops, the doors open onto something that steals my breath.

The room is massive, carved directly into the rock beneath the house. Glass walls hold monitors showing stock prices, news feeds, security cameras. People in expensive suits move between workstations, their fingers flying over keyboards.

This isn't just a basement. It's a command center.

"Welcome to Valen Industries," Salome says. "The part the world doesn't see."

I watch the monitors flicker between different feeds. Building sites in Dubai. Oil rigs in the North Sea. Factories in China. Each screen shows another piece of an empire I never knew existed.

But one monitor catches my attention. It's showing a news feed from back home.

"...sources confirm that Lucia Mendez remains in private treatment following her breakdown. However, there are unverified reports that someone has been asking questions about her whereabouts..."

My blood turns to ice. Someone asking questions. David? Yvonne?

"Is that...?"

"Nothing to worry about," Salome says quickly, but I catch the flash of something in her eyes. Concern? Or excitement? "We expected this. They're getting nervous."

"Nervous about what?"

"About whether you're really as broken as they think you are." She touches my arm, steering me away from the monitor. "All the more reason to move quickly with your training."

"How big is this?" My voice sounds small in the vast space.

"Fifteen countries. Forty-three major corporations. Annual revenue of eight hundred billion dollars." She walks toward the center of the room, and every person we pass stops working to bow their head. "All of it built in shadows. All of it invisible to governments and competitors."

Eight hundred billion. The number is so large it doesn't feel real.

"Why show me this?"

"Because half of it is yours now." Salome stops at a desk covered in documents. "You're my heir, Isabella. My only family. When I die, this all becomes yours."

The papers on the desk blur together. Corporate structures, bank accounts, property deeds. Each document represents more power than I ever dreamed of possessing.

"I don't understand any of this."

"You will." She picks up a tablet and hands it to me. "Your education starts now."

The screen shows a photo of a man I've never seen before. Middle-aged, expensive suit, cold eyes.

"Marcus Chen," Salome explains. "He owns the largest shipping company in Asia. Last month, he tried to steal one of our contracts by bribing officials in Singapore."

"What happened to him?"

"His company lost ninety percent of its value in three days. His wife left him. His children won't speak to him. He's currently living in a studio apartment and driving for rideshare companies to pay rent." She pauses, and something flickers across her face that makes my stomach turn. A tiny smile, like she's remembering a particularly delicious meal. "The best part? He still doesn't know it was us."

The casual cruelty in her voice makes my skin crawl. But underneath my revulsion, I feel something else. Something that scares me more.

Admiration.

"You did that?"

"Information is power, Isabella. We found evidence of his tax evasion, his affairs, his illegal business practices. We didn't create his problems, we simply made sure the right people knew about them." Her smile grows wider, and for just a moment, she looks less like a businesswoman and more like something predatory. "He cried when they repo'd his yacht. Actually cried. A grown man."

There's genuine pleasure in her voice now, and it makes me wonder what else she enjoys watching burn.

She swipes to another photo. A woman this time, younger, with kind eyes and a warm smile.

"Sarah Martinez. She runs a charity that feeds homeless children. Beautiful work, really. Very inspiring."

Something in Salome's tone makes me nervous. "What's wrong with her?"

"Nothing. But her husband was stealing money from our pension fund. Small amounts over many years. We could have had him arrested."

"Why didn't you?"

"Because we found a better solution." Salome's smile could cut steel. "We made sure his wife's charity received a anonymous donation of exactly the amount he stole. Then we sent him photos of homeless children eating meals bought with his theft. He returned every penny and quit his job the same day."

I stare at the woman's photo. Her smile looks so genuine, so full of hope. She has no idea her happiness was used as a weapon against her own husband.

"That's cruel."

"That's effective." Salome takes the tablet back. "Cruelty would have been destroying them both. This way, she keeps helping children, and he learns the cost of stealing from us."

We walk deeper into the command center. The people working here don't look like criminals or thugs. They look like bankers, lawyers, accountants. Normal people doing terrible things with spreadsheets and phone calls.

"How many people work for you?"

"Directly? About three thousand. Indirectly? Maybe fifty thousand. Most of them don't know they're working for me."

Fifty thousand people. All of them part of this machine built to destroy anyone who gets in the way.

"What am I supposed to do with all this?"

Salome stops walking and turns to face me. For the first time since I've known her, she looks uncertain.

"That depends. What do you want, Isabella?"

The question hits me like a physical blow. What do I want?

I want David to suffer the way I suffered. I want Yvonne to lose everything the way I lost everything. I want them to know what it feels like to have their world ripped apart by someone they trusted.

But more than that, I want to make sure no one ever hurts me again.

"I want to be untouchable," I say finally.

"Good." Her uncertainty disappears, replaced by something that looks almost hungry. "Because that's exactly what I'm going to teach you to become."

She leads me to a conference room with walls made entirely of glass. Inside, a dozen people sit around a polished table, all of them watching me with curious eyes.

"Everyone," Salome announces, "meet Isabella Valen. My daughter. Your new boss."

The silence that follows is deafening. These people, who bow their heads when Salome passes, are studying me like I'm an interesting specimen in a lab.

A man at the far end of the table clears his throat. "With respect, Miss Valen, you look very young for this responsibility."

Before I can respond, Salome speaks. "Isabella graduated from Oxford at nineteen. She has degrees in economics and international law. She speaks six languages fluently and has been working in our European operations for the past five years."

None of that is true, but she says it with such conviction that even I almost believe it.

The man nods, but his eyes narrow slightly. "Impressive. And what's your opinion on the Jakarta acquisition?"

My mind goes blank. Jakarta? What Jakarta? I can feel everyone staring at me, waiting for an answer that proves I belong here.

My hands start to shake under the table.

"I think..." I clear my throat, trying to buy time. "I think we need to review the regulatory implications more carefully."

It's a nothing answer, the kind of corporate speak that could mean anything. But the man nods like I've said something profound.

"Exactly what I was thinking," he says.

I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding. But when I glance at Salome, there's something calculating in her expression that wasn't there before. Like she's filing away this moment for later use.

"Any other questions?" Salome asks.

No one speaks.

"Excellent. Isabella will be observing our operations for the next few months. I expect your full cooperation."

We leave the conference room, and I can feel their eyes following us.

"They don't trust me," I say once we're alone.

"They don't trust anyone. That's what keeps them alive." Salome presses the elevator button. "Trust is earned, Isabella. Through results."

"How do I get results when I don't know what I'm doing?"

"By learning. By watching. By becoming someone they fear to disappoint."

The elevator rises toward the surface, carrying us away from that underground world of monitors and secrets.

"There's something else you need to understand," Salome says as we reach the main floor. "The business I've built, it's not just about money. It's about control. Information. The ability to destroy anyone who threatens what we've created."

We walk back through the mansion, past paintings worth millions and furniture that belongs in museums.

"Tomorrow, you start learning how to use those tools," she continues. "How to find people's weaknesses. How to turn their strengths against them. How to smile while you're cutting their throats."

We stop outside my bedroom door. The same room where I've been recovering, learning to live with my new face and my new name.

"I have one question," I say.

"What?"

"David and Yvonne. When do we start hunting them?"

Salome's smile is sharp enough to draw blood.

"Oh, my dear girl. We're not going to hunt them."

My heart sinks. "We're not?"

"No." Her eyes glitter with something that makes my pulse race. "We're going to let them think they're safe. Let them build new lives with your money. Let them get comfortable."

"Why?"

"Because the higher they climb, the farther they have to fall." She reaches out and touches my cheek with one perfectly manicured finger. "And when they do fall, Isabella, it's going to be beautiful."

She turns and walks away, leaving me standing in the hallway with my thoughts spinning like a tornado.

I go into my room and lock the door. Walk to the mirror and stare at my reflection again.

Isabella Valen looks back at me. Cold. Calculating. Beautiful in a way that could cut glass.

I used to wear vanilla perfume. Sweet and innocent, like everything else about me. Now the smell makes me sick. I prefer the sharp scent of the cedar and steel that fills Salome's command center.

The soft girl who believed in love is truly dead now.

What stands in her place is something new. Something dangerous.

Something that David and Yvonne are going to wish they'd never created.

I practice smiling in the mirror. Not the warm, genuine smile that Lucia used to give. This smile is different. Sharper. It promises pain hidden behind politeness.

But it doesn't feel like mine yet. The expression sits on my face like a mask that hasn't quite learned to fit properly.

"Hello," I say to my reflection, testing out Isabella's voice. "My name is Isabella Valen."

The words taste like power.

Like revenge.

The smile is sharp, but it still feels strange on my lips.

But it will feel natural soon. It has to.

Because this is who I am now. This is who I choose to be.

And David and Yvonne have no idea what's coming for them.