The sirens didn't sound real.
They shrieked in the distance, warped and underwater, as if the air itself couldn't quite process what had just happened.
Liam's hands were slick with blood.
Vivian's blood.
He'd pressed down on the wound like it could somehow stop time, like pressure alone could reverse a bullet's damage. Her eyes had fluttered once, then not again. Her breathing was shallow, rattling. The warehouse lights buzzed overhead like a cruel joke, casting everything in cold, unforgiving blue.
He didn't remember screaming. But his throat was raw.
"She needs oxygen... where the hell is that ambulance?" Charlotte's voice snapped into the static, crisp and furious. She was kneeling beside him, one gloved hand checking Vivian's pulse, the other clenching a comm unit. "ETA is two minutes. We need to keep her conscious."
"She...she's not waking up." Liam's voice cracked, hoarse. "Why isn't she waking up?"
Aiden hovered nearby, ghost-pale and hollow-eyed. "I didn't know... I swear, this wasn't supposed to happen"
"Shut up," Charlotte barked. "You don't get to speak right now."
But Liam didn't respond to either of them. His world had narrowed to the blood soaking into his shirt, the weak rise and fall of Vivian's chest, the smear of crimson along her collarbone.
She had pushed him out of the way. She'd seen the gun before he did.
She had taken the bullet meant for him.
"Stay with me," he whispered. "Vivian. You stubborn, reckless...please."
She didn't answer.
The EMTs stormed in like soldiers. Liam barely registered their arrival until one of them pulled him back by the shoulders, another pushing an oxygen mask over Vivian's face, shouting stats and vitals he couldn't follow.
Charlotte dragged him away. He resisted at first, then let her.
"She's going to make it," she said.
"You don't know that."
"No, I don't," Charlotte admitted, voice raw. "But if she dies, we lose everything."
That word... dies felt like it detonated something in his chest.
Outside, the air was thick with smoke. The warehouse smoldered, a shell of metal and lies. Police cars, fire trucks, press vans all converging like vultures to a fresh kill.
"Where is she?" Liam asked numbly.
"Who?"
"Evelyn."
Charlotte's mouth tightened. "Gone. Slipped out during the chaos. She planned this perfectly."
Aiden stood several feet away, flanked by two Ashford security guards. Not arrested. Not yet. Just waiting.
Liam turned to him, slowly.
"I should kill you," he said, voice low, almost calm. "I really should."
Aiden flinched but didn't move. "I never wanted her hurt. I...God, I didn't think she'd actually..."
"No. You didn't think," Liam growled. "You let Evelyn play you, and now Vivian's in surgery."
He didn't wait for an answer. Didn't want one.
He walked past the wreckage, past the cameras, past the shouting voices. He didn't stop moving until he reached the ambulance door until he saw them wheeling Vivian inside, an oxygen mask fogging with each shallow breath.
Then the doors slammed shut.
And the silence returned.
Hospitals had their own kind of silence.
Not the kind that comforted or calmed.
The kind that listened.
Liam sat in a low leather armchair outside the private surgical wing, elbows on his knees, the dim glow of amber sconces casting long shadows across the marble floor. His cufflinks were missing. His hands were stained not just with blood, but with a hundred decisions he couldn't take back.
He didn't remember when he'd taken off his jacket. It lay forgotten over the armrest beside him, creased and damp.
Charlotte stood nearby in a tailored blazer, speaking into a discreet earpiece. Her voice was low but firm coordinating legal buffers, media blackouts, sweeping up the pieces before Evelyn could twist the narrative.
She hadn't sat down once.
Liam stared at the frosted glass doors, etched with the Ashford family crest a mark that once meant power, now just a hollow symbol while someone he loved lay cut open on the other side.
Vivian had been breathing when they wheeled her in. That thought replayed in his mind like a mantra. She was breathing. She was breathing.
A staff member in a crisp black suit offered him something herbal tea, not coffee but he didn't take it. His palms were already slick with sweat. He didn't need his hands full. He needed them clean.
"Liam," Charlotte said softly, approaching at last. She took the seat beside him, crossing one leg over the other. "No leaks. Aiden's in custody. Evelyn's silent for now."
"How long?" he asked, his voice raw.
"Two hours. They're stabilizing her."
He gave a slow nod. "She screamed."
Charlotte didn't say anything.
"I've heard her yell, cry, even curse me out before," he said. "But I've never heard her scream like that."
He rested his forehead in his hand.
Charlotte sat with him in silence. The kind of silence that said, I'm here. I'll stay.
Eventually, the private wing doors opened with a whisper, and a surgeon in sleek navy scrubs stepped out. He wore no exhaustion, only precision the kind bred in the top one percent of medicine.
"Mr. Ashford," he said, voice measured. "Vivian is stable."
Liam rose to his feet, too fast. "She made it?"
"She did. The bullet missed her lung and any critical arteries. We've repaired the damage, and she's in recovery now. You'll be allowed in soon."
Liam exhaled a breath that seemed to deflate everything inside him. His shoulders sagged, and for the first time since it began, he let himself believe she would live.
"She's going to be okay," Charlotte murmured.
He didn't look at her. "Then Evelyn isn't."
The room smelled like old paper and ambition.
Evelyn Vale stood at the head of a long conference table, untouched glass of red wine beside her, screen glowing behind her with the latest intelligence report: "Vivian Ashford Condition: STABLE."
"Unacceptable," she said.
Graham leaned against the far wall, his arms crossed, blazer undone, tie loose like he was trying to look relaxed. He wasn't. He looked like a man who'd just lost control of the steering wheel and realized the brakes were gone too.
"She was supposed to die," Evelyn said, enunciating each word like a sentence. "That was the point."
"She didn't," Graham replied. "But we still fractured them. Aiden played his part."
Evelyn turned toward him. "You gave her a clean shot."
Graham didn't flinch. "She had backup. Ashford's security swept the warehouse three minutes early someone tipped them. You think I planned for Vivian to walk out of that trap with a bullet grazing her ribs instead of through her heart?"
Evelyn said nothing for a long moment. Then she walked slowly toward the screen, where a freeze-frame of Liam standing outside the surgical unit was paused mid-expression his face drawn, jaw clenched, eyes dull with fury.
"He's going to retaliate," she said.
Graham nodded once. "Of course he is."
"He won't stop this time."
"He never was good at staying in the lines."
She looked over her shoulder. "And neither were we."
The tension hung between them like a loaded gun neither wanted to fire first.
Evelyn picked up the wine glass but didn't drink from it. "We underestimated her," she said. "Vivian. She's not a puppet anymore."
"No," Graham agreed. "She's something else now. Something dangerous."
Evelyn's eyes flicked toward a side console where three classified reports glowed in red:
Operation Severance: Initiated
Ashford Shareholder Undermining: In Progress
Final Contingency: Code Black — Awaiting Confirmation
She tapped the last one with a manicured nail.
"It's time," she said. "Call the board."
Graham blinked. "Now?"
"We don't need subtle anymore. They made it personal."
"And you think the board will side with you after a failed assassination?"
"They'll side with power," Evelyn replied coolly. "And I still have that. For now."
She set the wine glass down untouched and walked out of the room, heels silent on the polished floor. Graham didn't move. He just watched the screen paused on Liam's face and quietly muttered, "We should've killed her when we had the chance."
The beeping of the monitors was steady, but it grated on her.
Vivian stared at the ceiling. White. Too clean. Too sterile.
The IV in her arm itched, and she hated the way the hospital gown made her feel like a fragile thing. A survivor. A statistic.
Her side throbbed where the bullet had grazed her ribs. Clean shot, the surgeon had said. Could've been worse. Could've torn through her lung. Could've ended everything.
But it hadn't.
And that, in itself, felt like a dare from the universe.
There was a soft knock. Then Charlotte peeked in.
"You up?"
Vivian nodded slowly. "Barely."
"You look better."
"I look like hell."
Charlotte smiled faintly. "Well, you're breathing. Which is more than what Evelyn wanted."
She crossed the room and sat beside her. She had a tablet in hand.
"We traced the signal from the warehouse." Her tone shifted, war sharp beneath the concern. "Encrypted, but not unbreakable. Aiden was the contact. Still using burner relays, but we finally pinned a live transmission."
Vivian's eyes narrowed. "You mean..."
Charlotte tapped the screen. A paused video call icon pulsed faintly. "He's trying to reach you."
"I don't want..."
"I know," Charlotte cut in gently. "But I think you should hear what he has to say. He asked for you. Not Liam. Not me. Just you."
Vivian stared at the screen like it might explode.
Then she nodded.
Charlotte stood and quietly stepped out of the room.
The call connected.
Aiden appeared, dim lighting, shadows across his face, but his voice was steady. Too steady.
"You're alive," he said.
Vivian's voice was hoarse but steady. "Disappointed?"
He flinched. Just slightly.
"No," he said. "Just… surprised. I didn't think you'd still trust the system enough to let them pull you out of that building alive."
"I didn't," she said flatly. "Charlotte did."
A pause.
Then: "I didn't want them to kill you. That wasn't the deal."
Vivian scoffed. "You're still playing the 'deal' game? You put a target on my back, Aiden. Don't act like you tripped and fell into betrayal."
"I gave Evelyn just enough to get what I needed," he said. "And now I'm giving you what she doesn't want you to know."
She narrowed her eyes.
"Code Black," he said. "It's real. And she's activating it within forty-eight hours. Once the board's on her side, it's over."
Vivian's throat tightened. "What is it?"
Aiden looked down, hesitant.
"She's burning everything. Digital leaks, blackmail evidence, false shareholder reports, personal history rewrites... she's rewriting the narrative. You'll be a cautionary tale. Liam will be painted as unstable. And Charlotte?" He hesitated. "She'll be implicated as a rogue agent. Compromised."
Vivian didn't blink. "Why are you telling me this?"
Aiden looked tired. Older than he should have.
"Because I've done things I can't take back. But this... this I can."
Silence stretched between them. Then Vivian said, softly:
"You picked the wrong side."
"I know."
She ended the call.
Charlotte reentered a moment later.
Vivian turned to her. "We have forty-eight hours."
Charlotte nodded. "Then let's burn her first."
The war room wasn't a war room.
It was a repurposed office three floors below Ashford's legal department, cleared out and rewired for off-grid access. No windows. No names on the door. Just a folding table, a monitor rigged to a secure line, and the raw tension of people who had run out of time.
Liam stood with his arms folded, staring at the red countdown blinking on the screen. 47:51:36.
Across from him, Vivian sat stiffly in her chair, still pale, her hospital bracelet tucked beneath the sleeve of her sweater. But she was upright. Awake. Angry.
Charlotte entered last, throwing a stack of files on the table. "Digital footprint on Code Black spans six shell companies. Evelyn's been planning this for over a year. Laundering board votes, bribing media execs, even grooming successors."
"She's staging a full rewrite," Liam said, voice cold. "And we're the loose ends."
Vivian looked up. "Then we cut first."
Charlotte flipped open the top folder. "Here's what we know: the trigger for Code Black is tied to a financial fraud report Evelyn forged, the one that paints Ashford's current leadership as embezzlers. She leaks it, the board panics, stock crashes, she swoops in with her 'solution.' That's the move."
Vivian leaned forward. "Can we intercept it?"
Charlotte hesitated. "We'd have to prove it's a fake before she leaks it. If we wait until after, we'll be labeled reactionary. Desperate."
"And if we go public too soon?" Liam asked.
"She'll counter with doctored proof. She's already primed the press with the narrative that we're unstable."
Vivian's voice was calm, but laced with steel. "So we burn her plan before it ignites. Discredit her. Expose Code Black. Leak our own narrative."
Charlotte raised an eyebrow. "A counter-leak?"
Liam nodded. "We use her tactics. Only sharper."
For a moment, the room was silent.
Then Charlotte reached for her laptop. "Alright. If we're doing this, we go full throttle. I've got encrypted backups of her dummy shell company trail. And..." she tapped a key, "...we have the footage Aiden gave us. Him naming Evelyn. That buys us credibility."
Vivian's gaze sharpened. "And Liam, your name still holds weight with the old investors. If you go on record..."
He met her eyes. "I will."
No hesitation.
No fear.
Just purpose.
Vivian let out a slow breath.
"Forty-seven hours. That's all we have."
Charlotte smirked. "Plenty of time to set the world on fire."
Vivian nodded once. "Then let's make sure when Evelyn lights her match… she's the one who burns."