The night following their explosive public debut, Julian Seo's penthouse suite did not offer rest, but a new headquarters. Julian stripped the boardroom of formal austerity, replacing it with massive interconnected screens displaying complex digital blueprints of the Sterling Group headquarters real-time financial models.
Eliza stood beside Julian, her original adrenaline crash replaced by a cold surgical focus. Her hand moved across the illuminated plans of the Sterling Tower. "The hard-copy ledgers containing the true unlaundered accounts—the ones Director Sterling showed me before he ordered my execution—in the subterranean vault, behind the main server room. They scheduled for mandatory incineration by the internal auditor in exactly sixty hours."
"Sixty hours," Julian repeated, his voice low calculating as he zoomed in on the vault's security schematic. "A classic corporate scorched-earth strategy. They clean the slate just before the scandal breaks. We need to acquire that data before it turns to ash. This your move, Eliza. Your knowledge of the building's security history the key."
Eliza pointed to a small often-overlooked maintenance shaft near the HVAC units on the tenth floor. "The security protocol there updated in 2018, but the blueprints from 2005. I remember the former head of security, Mr. Han, complaining about the cost of re-wiring the entire building. The shaft on the tenth floor still on the legacy circuit—a simple code bypass, easily accessed through the janitor's closet. Once we inside, it a direct descent to the sub-levels."
Julian leaned back, a rare almost predatory smile touching his lips. "You a better weapon than any financial algorithm, Eliza. I can provide the entry team the equipment; you will provide the map the codes. We execute Operation Ledger tonight."
As Julian turned to contact his team, Eliza placed a hand on his arm, stopping him. The moment of strategic partnership fractured, replaced by the terrifying reality of their shared secret. "Julian, we need to discuss the risk," she said, her voice dropping to a whisper. "The fate swap. My original death precipitated by the Sterling Group's attempt to cover up these exact ledgers. If we succeed now, we accelerating the timeline. We forcing Vicki Hayes her father into a corner far sooner than planned. The danger that the transferred fate will strike us before it finds her."
Julian looked down at her hand, acknowledging the unexpected touch before meeting her gaze. "That the gamble we took when you accepted the contract, Eliza. We changing the variables, not the outcome. The original misfortune—terminal illness violent death—is tethered to the individual who causes you the most pain, which now Vicki. We must trust the rules of the game. If we wait, they destroy the evidence, we lose the war. We move now, we keep her in our crosshairs until the transfer complete." The decision made. The partnership cemented, built not on affection, but on mutual terrified respect for the invisible laws of time fate.
*The Acquisition*
The break-in surgical silent, a testament to Titan Investments' discrete resources Julian's meticulous planning. At 2:00 AM, Eliza, dressed in all black, moved through the cold silent depths of the Sterling Tower with the innate confidence of someone who had once lived died for the building's infrastructure. Julian, who insisted on accompanying her—a gesture Eliza recognized as a protective instinct honed by his own painful death—was her anchor.
They entered through the tenth-floor janitor's closet. Using the bypass code Eliza memorized a decade ago, they accessed the maintenance shaft. The air thick with the dust of old concrete the high hum of latent electrical power. "The stairs down to the vault sealed by biometrics pressure plates," Eliza whispered, her voice tight as they reached the sub-level. "But the server room, which shares the wall with the vault, only magnetic locks a simple keypad. The pin Director Sterling's birth year—1958."
"Predictable," Julian muttered. He neutralized the magnetic lock with a device no larger than a credit card inputted the code. The lock clicked, they slipped inside the server room—a vast frigid space dominated by humming racks of digital data. The cold profound, a shocking contrast to the outside world. Eliza quickly located the hidden access door disguised as a fire panel behind the main server rack. "Behind this door the antechamber to the vault. I need ten seconds."
Julian moved to the entrance, his focus locked on the thermal cameras. "The cameras sweep left every sixty-five seconds. You have precisely fifty-five until the blind spot closes." With practiced efficiency, Eliza disarmed the panel, revealing a heavy steel door marked 'Archival Storage.' She didn't use force; she used memory. She manipulated the decades-old locking mechanism in sequence: turn right twice, lift, push down, hold the lower latch, turn left once. The heavy tumblers inside the vault door groaned, the solid steel creaked open.
They in. Inside, the vault a smaller temperature-controlled room containing rows of antique filing cabinets heavy fireproof safes. Eliza ignored the cabinets, heading directly for the back corner. "It here," she said, her voice shaking slightly. She ran her hands over the familiar ridges of an old heavy-duty safe. "The original ledgers, cross-referenced with all the shell company aliases." Julian took a small specialized laser-cutting device from his bag. "The time for subtlety over. This safe not coming with us."
The laser beam nearly silent, slicing through the hinges with surgical heat. A low metallic thud echoed in the room as the heavy door fell inward. Inside, nestled beneath old deeds stock certificates, dozens of bound leather-backed books—the true bloody accounting of the Sterling Group's empire. Eliza pulled out the stack of ledgers quickly photographed every page with a specially encrypted phone Julian provided, Julian watching the time, his expression grim. They knew they not just stealing money; they stealing the past creating a future.
*The Verdict*
They were back in the Titan penthouse by 4:30 AM, the evidence secured uploading to a private server. The sheer scale of the corruption detailed in the ledgers—money laundering, political payoffs, illicit arms dealing—even worse than Eliza remembered. "The volume catastrophic," Julian confirmed, scrolling through the digitized pages. "This isn't just a corporate scandal; it a criminal syndicate disguised as a conglomerate. Your original death justified by the need to keep this silent."
Eliza finished dressing in a clean silk robe, the cold of the vault finally leaving her skin. "The key the section labeled 'Project Phoenix.' It the money used to pay off the regulatory bodies. If we leak that single section to the financial watchdogs, the entire system collapses within a week. The executives go down, the group fractures." "Good. We will use the information strategically. The first move a targeted release to destabilize the stock, then a private briefing with the prosecutors I trust," Julian explained, already moving into CEO mode. "The public narrative will be that the collapse due to internal corruption incompetence—corruption that Victoria Hayes directly involved in managing."
As the first sliver of dawn painted the sky, the true exhilarating rush of revenge settled over Eliza. They had the weapon. They had the plan. The Sterling Group about to face the reckoning of a future they never saw coming.
*The Irrefutable Transfer*
Miles away, in her family's mansion, Victoria Hayes woke up not to the news of the stolen ledgers, but to the blinding crushing weight of a paralyzing headache. She staggered out of her pristine custom-made sheets, the anger from the previous night's humiliation suddenly replaced by an intense dizzying nausea. The world spun. She reached for the antique alarm clock, knocking it to the floor.
Vicki managed to reach the bathroom, leaning heavily against the marble countertop. She tried to steady herself, splashing cold water on her face, but the nausea intensified into a wave of sharp internal pain—a pain unlike any headache or migraine she ever experienced. It felt like a deep cancerous bloom within her skull, suffocating her.
Panic flared. Vicki vain, obsessed with her body's perfection. She saw herself as untouchable, flawless, the inheritor of all good fortune. This raw brutal physical violation an alien invasion. She stumbled back to the bed, collapsing onto the sheets, curling into a protective ball. She dismissed it as stress—a panic attack brought on by Eliza Chen's vile stunt. But the searing internal pain remained, a cold relentless reminder that something deeply catastrophically wrong now inside her.
The transfer of fate, invisible merciless, found its new host. Vicki Hayes, the woman who always been destined for perfect health wealth, now cursed with the first sharp pang of the terminal misfortune that originally belonged to Eliza Chen. The clock ticking, it now counting down to Vicki's fate.