The music in the ballroom seemed to fade into a hollow echo. The sting on my cheek was a branding iron, hot and sharp, but it grounded me. For twenty-six years, I had played the dutiful daughter, absorbing the emotional shrapnel of my mother’s endless ambition and my sister Chloe’s reckless entitlement. But as the silence rippled outward, catching the attention of the decorated men and women holding crystal flutes of champagne, the final tether snapped.

“Director!” Hayes shouted, his hands frantically dancing across his keyboard. “We have a massive unauthorized data pull! Someone is inside the Aegis mainframe. They are bypassing the first three firewalls.”

“Where is the breach originating from?” Julian barked, instantly taking over the secondary terminal.

“It’s an internal ping!” Miller yelled over the alarms. “It’s coming from inside the estate!”

I froze. The estate. The party. The guests.

“The mole,” I said, the realization hitting me like a physical blow. “Markov didn’t just use Chloe to map the network. He used her to get an invitation to the engagement party.”

I spun around, staring at the live security feeds of the ballroom. Hundreds of guests were laughing, drinking, oblivious to the digital war raging beneath their feet.

“Scan the guest list!” I ordered. “Who isn’t in the ballroom?”

Julian’s eyes darted across the security feeds. “The catering staff. The valets. The string quartet.”

“No,” I said, my eyes locking onto a feed from the second-floor hallway. “There.”

A figure in a waiter’s uniform was moving swiftly and silently toward the west wing—the wing that housed the physical server farm for the estate’s localized intranet.

“He’s going for the hardline,” Julian realized. “If he plugs a physical decryptor into the servers, he can bypass our external firewalls and pull the entire Aegis operative roster.”

“Not on my watch,” I snarled. I reached under the command desk, my fingers wrapping around the cold, familiar grip of a suppressed 9mm tactical pistol. I checked the chamber, sliding the weapon seamlessly into the hidden thigh holster beneath my gown.

“Stay here and lock down the network,” I told Julian. “Burn the shell corporations if you have to. Don’t let him get a single byte of data out of this house.”

“Natalie, wait—” Julian started, but I was already out the vault door.

I sprinted down the silent, carpeted hallways of the private wing, the heavy silk of my gown rustling like falling leaves. I kicked off my diamond-encrusted heels, preferring the silent stealth of bare feet. My mind was razor-sharp, the emotional exhaustion of dealing with my mother entirely replaced by the cold, calculating focus of a Director protecting her people.

The west wing was dark. The server room was located at the end of a long, windowless corridor. I pressed my back against the wall, inching toward the heavy steel door. It was slightly ajar, a faint, rhythmic hum of cooling fans echoing from within.

I drew my weapon, taking a slow, shallow breath. I could see the shadow of the intruder dancing against the wall, illuminated by the flashing LED lights of the server racks.

I pivoted around the doorframe, raising my weapon in a fluid, practiced motion.

“Step away from the console,” I ordered, my voice hard as diamonds.

The figure froze. He was a tall, heavily muscled man wearing a caterer’s vest, his hands currently plugging a sleek black drive into the primary mainframe port. He turned his head slowly, and the flashing lights illuminated the scar on his eyebrow.

Anton Markov.

He didn’t look surprised to see me. In fact, he smiled. It was a terrifying, reptilian expression.

“Natalie Carter,” Markov said, his accent thick and grating. “You look just like your father when he realized he was going to die.”

My finger tightened marginally on the trigger. “And you look like a man who is about to spend the rest of his very short life in a black site. Remove your hand from the drive. Turn around. Hands on your head.”

“Or what, little girl?” Markov sneered, pivoting fully to face me. “You will shoot me in your pretty dress? Your father was a soldier. You are just a socialite playing with his toys.”

“My father built the toys,” I corrected him coldly. “I upgraded them.”

Markov lunged. He was incredibly fast, a blur of violent motion aiming to disarm me before I could fire. But I wasn’t my father. I didn’t fight like a soldier. I fought like a ghost.

I dropped to one knee, dodging his grasping hands, and fired a single, suppressed shot into his right thigh.

Markov let out a guttural roar, collapsing heavily against the server racks. Blood instantly began to pool on the pristine white tiles.

I stood slowly, keeping the weapon leveled directly at his chest. “I am the Director of Aegis Strategic,” I said, my voice echoing in the hum of the servers. “I am not a socialite. And I don’t play.”

Behind me, the door banged open. Julian burst into the room, a tactical rifle raised to his shoulder, followed closely by General Vance and a squad of heavily armed operatives in evening wear.

Julian assessed the situation in a fraction of a second, his weapon lowering as he saw Markov bleeding on the floor and me standing unharmed. He stepped forward, yanking the black drive from the server port and tossing it to an operative.

“Is the network secure?” I asked, not taking my eyes off Markov.

“Airtight,” Julian confirmed, coming to stand beside me. “He didn’t extract a single file. We trapped his malware in a sandbox and traced the origin signal back to a Volkov safe house in Geneva. Our European teams are moving in on it as we speak.”

General Vance looked down at Markov, his face a mask of disgust. “Get this piece of garbage out of my sight. Take him to the interrogation facility. I want to know everything the Volkovs are planning before the sun comes up.”

The operatives dragged a cursing, bleeding Markov out of the room. General Vance lingered for a moment, looking between Julian and me.

“Your father would be proud, Natalie,” the General said softly. “You secured the network, stopped an international breach, and handled a family crisis all before dessert.”

“Just another Friday night at Aegis, General,” I said with a faint smile.