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The microphone feedback hummed through the crystal-adorned ballroom, a sharp, metallic shriek that instantly silenced the murmurs of the elite. / Chapter 10 / 10

Chapter 10 - THE TRUE WORTHMarcus stepped back inside, leaving me alone on the balcony with the cool night breeze and the vast, open sky.

I reached up with my right hand and gently touched the small silver bracelet hidden beneath my sleeve—the only thing I had managed to take with me twenty-one years ago when I walked out into the freezing rain.

Back then, my father had looked at me with cold, disdainful eyes and told me I would become nothing. He told me the world would show me what I was worth.

He was right, after all.

The world did show me what I was worth.

It wasn't measured in bank accounts, corporate titles, or aristocratic last names. It was measured in resilience, in courage, and in the lives I had protected along the way.

I looked down at my hand, then out at the endless horizon where the stars shone brighter than any crystal chandelier in Conrad’s empty mansion.

I wasn't the broken nineteen-year-old girl anymore.

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The heavy mahogany door of the dressing room seemed to close in on us, trapping the suffocating tension inside. Richard’s hands were shaking as he clutched the small, tarnished silver pendant. His knuckles were bone-white.

The heavy mahogany door of the dressing room seemed to close in on us, t...

The heavy silver fork slipped from my fingers, clattering sharply against the gold-rimmed porcelain of my dinner plate.

The heavy silver fork slipped from my fingers, clattering sharply agains...

The heavy mahogany door of the Fairmont Copley suite clicked shut with a muffled, expensive thud.

The heavy mahogany door of the Fairmont Copley suite clicked shut with a...

I was Admiral Elise Voss.

And I had finally built an empire of my own.

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