The air inside the office felt too still, like it had swallowed the breath of every moment that came before it. Thiana stood by the mahogany desk, lips slightly parted, tension crawling along her spine like static. Zade's footsteps had long since vanished, but the echo of his fury lingered—sharp, echoing like slammed doors in her chest.
The lawyer cleared his throat, visibly shaken, his fingers fumbling as he opened the leather-bound property book Zade had left behind.
"Ma'am," he said, softly, almost pleading, "I... I urge you to reconsider. Please. Before anything final is set in motion."
Thiana didn't respond. Her gaze was fixed on the pages, eyes scanning line after line until her heartbeat nearly stopped.
Acting CEO.
Controlling Stakeholder: Zade Julius Cabello.
Her breath caught.
"No," she whispered, the denial barely reaching the corners of her mouth. "That's impossible."
But the ink didn't lie. Zade's name was etched into the bones of the company—signed, sealed, buried like a secret waiting to rise.
The lawyer nodded gently, expression etched with a grim understanding. "You've been the face, ma'am. Not the foundation."
Thiana staggered back.
The party downstairs had already begun. Music drifted faintly through the walls, guests sipping champagne with no idea a storm was about to breach the walls. She could hear the laughter. The soft shuffle of heels on marble.
Zade was somewhere down there.
Waiting.
Thiana stared into the digital terminal Ravien had installed beneath her private chamber—an interface so advanced it pulsed with warmth like a living thing. Lines of code flickered across the screen, symbols she'd never seen before, encrypted with ancient dialects. They weren't just corporate barriers. They were ancestral.
"This isn't a proxy override," Ravien said quietly. "It's a blood lock."
Her brows furrowed. "A what?"
Ravien stepped into the glow, face half-shadowed. "Zade didn't just encode his succession. He embedded his DNA signature into the company's neural vault. The system doesn't respond to passwords. It responds to blood lineage."
Thiana felt ice trickle into her veins.
"So I'd need... a Cabello heir?"
"Or the source," Ravien said. "Zade himself."
She leaned against the terminal, heart pounding.
But Zade was gone.
Not missing ... strategic. Ghosted. Somewhere out there watching every move, letting his silence bend reality.
Ravien touched the screen. "There's one file left uncracked. Marked in obsidian code. It bears his grandfather's name."
Thiana leaned forward, lips parting.
DAMIAN HUSTON: CONFESSION.
The vault chamber was colder than it should've been—temperature regulated to preserve historical data, but the chill in Thiana's bones didn't come from the air.
It came from the file labeled DAMIAN HUSTON: CONFESSION.
She tapped it once.
A loading bar appeared.
Then the screen flickered.
Ravien crossed his arms, jaw tense, eyes narrowed in anticipation. "Brace yourself," he muttered.
The video feed stuttered ... glitches like the file didn't want to be seen. Then came the image of an elderly man hunched over in a dim-lit room, breathing hard, sweat trailing down his temples despite the cold.
He looked familiar.
Not because of time.
But because of Zade.
This was his grandfather.
Damian Huston.
"I hope this reaches the right eyes," the voice rasped. "Because if not… Cabello won't burn. It'll implode."
Thiana leaned closer. Her pulse was loud. Her hands didn't tremble—but her heart did.
Damian's breath caught. Then he continued.
> "The Cabello bloodline is marked. We thought it was inheritance. But it was inheritance by death. Every generation has paid for the power they used. My son paid with his spine. Zade's mother paid with her sanity."
Thiana swallowed.
Damian's voice cracked.
> "Project Lazarus was supposed to undo it. To erase the ancestral marker that binds Cabello men to control. But we couldn't kill the ghost. We gave it a vessel."
> "We gave it... Zade."
Ravien took a step back. "He's not just heir to an empire."
Thiana whispered, "He's heir to a curse."
The room was still echoing with Damian Huston's final words when Thiana stepped back, pulse erratic, heart gripped by something cold and ancient. The ghost in Zade wasn't a metaphor—it was engineered. A legacy curse twisted into data. And she'd danced with it, kissed it, nearly married it again in silence.
Ravien's face was stone. His fingers curled against the desk, teeth grinding behind pursed lips.
"I knew Zade was tactical," he muttered, "but this—this is myth resurrected."
Thiana wrapped her arms around herself. Her reflection in the glass screen didn't look like a CEO. She looked like someone about to rewrite prophecy.
Lawrence arrived fifteen minutes later—agitated, damp with sweat, his tie half-loosened, eyes screaming sleepless nights.
He didn't sit.
"You activated the confession?"
Thiana nodded.
"It's worse than we thought," Ravien added.
Lawrence didn't flinch. "Then we push harder."
He pulled a vial from his coat—a small crimson capsule, glistening, glowing faintly under the terminal light.
"What is that?" Thiana asked.
"Tracker," Lawrence said. "Encoded with my bloodline signature. Modified with shadow markers from Lazarus protocols. If we inject it, every vault AI tethered to Cabello's system will respond."
Thiana's eyes widened. "You want to bait the ghost?"
Lawrence smiled bitterly. "I want to summon it."
Ravien stood. "You'll trigger fail-safes. Security will collapse."
"Good," Lawrence said. "If Zade wants to haunt us, let's shake the walls."
Thiana approached him slowly, hand outstretched. "I'll do it."
Lawrence gripped her wrist. "No. It must be blood of the Lazarus descendent. You escaped the binding. I didn't."
For the first time, Thiana saw his rage not as selfishness… but penance.
She nodded.
And injected him.
Within seconds, the screen pulsed.
Lines of code scrambled. Symbols twisted. A new folder appeared, unprompted:
ORIGINS_1.ZC
Ravien stepped back. "The ghost is awake."
Thiana stared.
A voice whispered through the speakers—faint, hollow, but unmistakably digital.
> "Blood confirmed. Core inheritance accessed. The cabal begins again."
Lawrence staggered, gripping the table.
The terminal displayed a second file. Locked.
Thiana touched it.
ACCESS DENIED. AUTHORIZATION REQUIRED.
Then a message scrawled across the screen:
> "You've inherited power. But stolen loyalty."
> "To unlock the vault... you must bury him."
A chilling pause.
> "Bury Zade Cabello."
The room went silent.
Thiana whispered, "They want me to kill him."
Ravien's jaw tightened. "Or entomb him. Sever blood from authority."
Lawrence collapsed onto the nearby couch, breathing hard.
Thiana didn't blink.
She stared at the message.
And knew what came next wouldn't be strategy.
It would be ritual.
The vault lights dimmed as Ravien secured the blood-sequenced capsule Lawrence had activated. Every surface of the chamber seemed to hum, as though awakened by ancestral memory. Thiana stood at the center like a keystone—her breath shallow, her mind spinning with the weight of what she'd uncovered.
The ghost in the system hadn't just inherited power.
It had inherited intent.
Lawrence sat slumped against the server wall, blood-traced lines pulsing faintly beneath his skin from the tracking serum. His face was pale. Not just from exhaustion—but from fear he couldn't shape into words.
Ravien turned to Thiana. "We need to decode the Origins_1.ZC file before Zade realizes we've triggered it."
Thiana approached the terminal again. Her eyes landed on the second prompt:
> "Unlock protocol requires biometric sacrifice."
She frowned. "Another blood signature?"
Ravien looked grim. "No. A severance."
Thiana's gaze sharpened. "Meaning?"
"The ghost sees Zade as its host. If you want full override… you have to sever his bloodline rights."
Lawrence flinched. "You'd be stripping his name off everything—ancestry, ownership, rights to Cabello itself."
Thiana whispered, "I'd be erasing him."
Ravien didn't blink. "And claiming the ghost as yours."
The air chilled.
Thiana hesitated, staring into the terminal's glow.
> "Initiate Severance?"
She lifted her hand.
Paused.
Then pressed NO.
Not yet.
The vault room exhaled with relief.
But Ravien's expression darkened. "He'll make you choose eventually."
Thiana nodded, silently agreeing.
She opened her encrypted inbox.
A new message had arrived.
Sender: Unknown
Subject: Damian Huston / Lazarus Directive
Attachment: CONFESSIONVIDEO2.HSTN
Her throat closed.
She tapped play.
Damian appeared again—older now, barely holding together, eyes sunken like time had swallowed his soul.
> "Thiana, if you've made it this far… then my sins didn't die with me. The Lazarus Protocol had two triggers. One was lineage. The other…"
He coughed. Voice fracturing.
> "...was love. True love between opposing bloodlines activates a failsafe meant to collapse the host's body. Zade was engineered to feel—but not survive it."
Thiana froze.
> "If he ever truly loved you… he'll die from it."
The screen went dark.
She collapsed into a chair, shattered and quiet.
Ravien didn't speak.
Lawrence didn't move.
Outside, the wind howled through glass panels like prophecy.
Thiana stared into the void of the blank screen.
Zade wasn't her enemy.
He was her funeral.