Anna's POV
The champagne was still warm in my glass.
I hadn't touched it since I found the files.
Our penthouse sat fifty-three floors above London, wrapped in floor-to-ceiling glass that turned the city into a sea of trembling lights. On any other night, I would have called it beautiful. On any other night, I would have stood at that window with Ryan's arm around my waist, his chin resting on my shoulder, both of us quietly owning the world together.
But tonight the glass felt like a cage.
The files were spread across his mahogany desk — printed, physical, deliberate. As if he had never expected anyone to find them. As if the idea of me finding them had never once crossed his mind. Seven years of marriage and he still underestimated me.
Red Room. Sector Nine. The Hollow Circle.
Names that didn't belong in the life of Ryan Thorne — billionaire, philanthropist, the most photographed man at every London gala. Names that belonged in the darkest corners of the internet, in places where humanity sold itself piece by piece for power and silence.
I had read every page.
I wished I hadn't.
My hands weren't shaking anymore. That frightened me more than anything — the stillness that had settled over me like snow over a grave. Somewhere between page four and page eleven, something inside me had simply gone quiet.
I heard the elevator before I heard him.
The soft mechanical hum. The doors sliding open. His footsteps — unhurried, measured — the same footsteps I had fallen asleep to for seven years. I didn't move from where I stood beside his desk. I kept my eyes on the city below, on all those distant trembling lights, and I waited.
"You're still awake."
His voice. God, his voice. Even now it was warm. Controlled. The voice of a man who had never once lost a negotiation in his life.
"I couldn't sleep," I said.
A pause.
It lasted exactly one second too long.
I turned around then, because I needed to see his face. I needed to know if the man I had loved was still in there somewhere behind those grey eyes, or if I had spent seven years sleeping beside a stranger wearing his skin.
Ryan stood at the edge of the room in his charcoal suit, tie loosened, one button undone at his collar. He looked the way he always looked at the end of a long day — effortlessly composed, devastatingly handsome. His eyes moved from my face to the desk. To the files.
And something shifted in him.
It was subtle. A lesser woman would have missed it. But I had spent seven years studying this man the way astronomers study stars — obsessively, devotedly, mapping every constellation of his expressions.
The warmth didn't leave his eyes.
It simply switched off.
"Anna." Just my name. Said so gently it almost sounded like an apology.
"I read everything," I said. My voice came out steadier than I expected. "The Red Rooms. The Hollow Circle. Sector Nine." I watched his jaw tighten imperceptibly. "I know what you did, Ryan. I know what you are."
He didn't deny it.
That was the moment I understood. Not when I found the files. Not when I read the names of the people who had disappeared because of the cult he had fed and funded. Right now — in his silence — standing fifty-three floors above London with the champagne gone warm in my hand.
He wasn't going to explain himself.
He was calculating.
"You don't understand the full picture," he said, moving toward me slowly. Calmly. The way you approach something fragile that you've already decided to discard. "You never could from those files alone."
"Then explain it to me." My fingers tightened around the champagne flute. "Explain it to your wife, Ryan. Explain it to the woman who has stood beside you for seven years and believed every single word that came out of your mouth."
He stopped three feet away from me.
And in his eyes — just for a fraction of a second — I saw something that was not Ryan. Something that lived beneath Ryan. Cold and ancient and utterly without mercy.
"I'm sorry," he said softly.
He said it like a full stop.
Not like a question. Not like a man who was about to beg forgiveness or offer explanations. He said it the way you close a book you've finished reading.
The champagne flute shattered on the floor.
Or maybe that was me.
The city lights blurred. The glass walls of our penthouse tilted. I felt the cold marble rise up to meet me and somewhere very far away I heard the sound of my own heartbeat slowing — deliberate, measured — like footsteps walking out of a room.
Ryan.
I had loved him so completely.
The last thing I saw was his face — composed, devastated, monstrous — watching me the way you watch something irreplaceable break beyond repair.
The last thing I felt was fury.
Pure. White. Burning.
And then —
Nothing.
Five years earlier. London. The night of the Red Moon Gala.
She opens her eyes.
— End of Prologue —