The room stayed dark for precisely ninety-three seconds.
Long enough for Alexander's security grid to reboot. Long enough for every encrypted file to flash vulnerably. And long enough for the Wolfe Tower to feel like prey in its own home.
When the power surged back online, the Rook symbol vanished from the screens.
But its echo lingered like a fingerprint on glass.
Yuna sat in the center of the command room, her eyes fixed on the now-blank monitor.
She didn't blink.
Didn't breathe.
"It's when the queen no longer moves."
They hadn't chosen that line randomly.
Someone targeted it.
Personal.
She glanced down at her hands, trembling slightly in her lap. "He's watching us."
Alexander nodded. "And not through the usual channels."
"He's in the system," Yuna said quietly. "No. Worse—he is the system."
Alexander stood, paced once, then turned back. "We need to identify him. No more smoke. No more riddles."
"Then we start with the pattern," Yuna said. "He's not some anonymous sadist. He knows our family. Our history. He's invested in the outcome."
Alexander's eyes narrowed. "So who has the most to gain?"
They pulled up the full operational record of Operation Hollow Crown. Every name. Every ghost signature. Every financial alias that touched the project.
One name repeated.
Not in glaring ink—but buried in backend encryption.
Alias: M_7Wraith
Access Level: Root Administrative Override
Last login: 00:03 AM — twenty minutes before the blackout.
Alexander tapped the alias.
It triggered a firewall—then a video.
A face materialized.
Obscured in shadow, but real.
A voice. Masked. Distorted.
Yet something in its cadence prickled at Yuna's skin.
"You keep looking outside the board. But I've been playing inside it all along."
A pause.
"Glass Dove wasn't about control. It was about replacement. Remove the unfit. Install the exceptional."
The screen cut.
Yuna sat back, breath caught.
She knew that cadence.
Knew the voice behind the distortion.
"Austin," she whispered.
Alexander flinched, jaw tightening. "We suspected him, but this—this confirms it."
"No." Yuna shook her head. "It's not just Austin. That voice—he was copying someone else."
Alexander turned sharply. "Who?"
She looked up.
Eyes haunted.
"Victor Eastin."
Alexander stiffened. "You're saying Rook… is your father?"
"No, I'm saying Austin used my father's programming—the way he spoke, the control phrases, the patterns. He's emulating Victor to send a message. But the real puppet master?" Her voice dropped. "I think we've been chasing the wrong king."
Alexander sat slowly, eyes fixed on the screen. "Then who is the real one?"
Yuna didn't speak.
Because the truth was forming in her mind faster than she could say it aloud.
What if Austin wasn't working for Victor?
What if Victor had been working for him?
What if Rook had never been the Eastins' assassin… but their handler?
On a private Eastin estate, far from the noise of press conferences and digital warfare, Victor Eastin sat in silence.
Alone.
He stared at the flickering fire in the hearth, a glass of untouched brandy beside him.
Elsa burst through the door, phone in hand.
"You didn't tell me Angel Wolfe left a confession. On record," she snapped.
Victor didn't flinch.
You've put everything at risk. "The files you swore were destroyed are appearing in every dark web chatroom," she seethed.
Victor blinked slowly. "I underestimated her."
"Yuna?"
He shook his head.
"No. The Rook."
Elsa's anger dimmed to confusion. "Wait… what?"
He looked up finally.
And in his eyes, for the first time, she saw something that made her spine go cold.
Fear.
"I thought I was the architect," he mumbled softly. "But I was never more than the blueprint."
Back at Wolfe Tower, Alexander ran a biometric trace on every file they had tied to Austin Daniel Monroe.
He shouldn't exist.
No birth certificate.
No school records before age fourteen.
The earliest official documentation? A passport issued in Geneva under the name Daniel Monroe-Astaire.
"No father listed," Alexander muttered.
Mother: Lillian Astaire. Deceased.
Yuna hovered behind him, scanning the profile. "That surname… Astaire. It's familiar."
Alexander pulled up an old boardroom map of the founding companies that merged into Wolfe International.
One name stood out.
Astaire Innovations—a micro-tech company, folded into Wolfe's empire a decade ago.
And the woman who'd helmed it?
Lillian Astaire.
"A rival of my mother," Alexander whispered. "She sued Wolfe International for patent infringement, then vanished in a supposed suicide. Her company got liquidated. The files were sealed."
Yuna drew a sharp breath. "Austin isn't just a saboteur."
"He's the heir of a fallen empire."
Alexander exhaled. "And he thinks we stole it."
Yuna's voice trembled. "This was never just about revenge."
"No," Alexander said. "It was about restoration."
Yuna leaned on the edge of the desk. "So let's put it all together. Austin's mother loses everything. He grew up in the shadows. Joins the Eastins—but only to use them. Gains access to my psychiatric records triggers Glass Dove. Gets close to you to plant financial bombs at Wolfe International. And now he's turned our story into a lie."
Alexander stood. "Because he wants to rewrite the legacy."
Yuna turned. "No. He wants to own it."
That night, they returned to the legacy vault beneath Wolfe Tower.
Alexander keyed in a hidden pass phrase—something only his mother knew.
It opened a file.
A single letter.
Dated before her "death."
Addressed to Austin.
"You were never meant to carry this burden, Daniel. I see a fire in you. The brilliance. But I also see the shadows. Don't become what they made you."
"If you must destroy something, destroy the illusion. But don't destroy my son. He is not the enemy."
Yuna read it aloud, her voice catching on the last line.
"She was trying to protect both of you," she whispered.
Alexander nodded. "And now he's trying to destroy both of us."
The next morning, a package arrived at Wolfe Tower.
No return address.
Just one symbol etched in wax:
♜
Inside?
A chessboard.
Hand-carved.
Every piece accounted for—except one.
The queen.
In its place, a bloodstained feather.
A note:
"She moved too far."
Yuna stared at it, skin prickling.
Alexander gripped the note, fingers tightening.
Then something clicked.
"Check the piece," he said.
She did.
The underside of the black king.
Etched in tiny letters.
A date.
"November 19th."
She gasped.
"That's next week."
Alexander's eyes sharpened.
"He's setting the board for something big."
Yuna looked at the feather again.
"This isn't a game anymore."
Alexander met her gaze.
"It never was."
Hours later, alone in her room, Yuna scrolled through archived security footage of Wolfe Tower.
Something bugged her.
The night the power went out… something moved in the dark.
Frame by frame, she rewound the footage.
Stopped.
Zoomed in.
A figure.
Brief. Fleeting.
On the floor, where the security files were kept.
She enhanced the frame.
Saw the back of a neck.
And a tattoo.
Not a rook.
But a dove.
Broken.
Cracked through the middle.
She stared.
Frozen.
She recognized that tattoo.
She had one just like it.
On her ribcage.
Put there when she was seventeen.
By a doctor, she no longer remembered.
A symbol her father said meant, "rebirth."
But it meant something else.
She wasn't just part of Glass Dove.
She was a prototype.
And Rook… wasn't his codename.
It was his designation.
Project ROOK.
Resurgence.
Operative.
Override.
Key.
Austin hadn't just sabotaged their lives.
He was built to erase them.