Chapter 6 - The Masquerade
The night of the gala, I transformed. I hired a stylist under the guise of "needing help for the event," but I specifically chose someone who knew how to make a woman look lethal. I chose a gown of deep, midnight blue—the color of the ocean at the point of drowning—and had my hair styled in a way that felt armor-like, sharp and structural.
When I stepped down the staircase, Dominic was waiting at the bottom. For a split second, he looked genuinely stunned. He wasn't looking at a broken woman; he was looking at a masterpiece.
“You look beautiful, Evelyn,” he said, but there was a flicker of apprehension in his eyes. He didn't like that he couldn't read me.
“It’s a big night, Dominic,” I replied, taking his arm. “I want to make sure you’re proud of me.”
The ballroom was filled with the city’s elite—the people who had helped build Dominic’s empire and the people he had stolen from to sustain it. As we walked through the crowd, I was the perfect hostess, smiling, nodding, and holding court. But my focus was entirely on Dominic’s phone, which sat in his jacket pocket, and his movements.
Julian had given me a small device—a proximity tracker that would intercept any data transmissions from Dominic’s phone to his private servers. I had tucked it into my clutch.
“Excuse me, darling,” I said, leaning in to whisper. “I need a moment in the powder room. I’ll meet you by the podium for your speech.”
He kissed my cheek—a cold, possessive touch—and turned to talk to a senator. I walked away, my heels clicking rhythmically against the marble floor. I slipped into the restricted hallway leading to the back office. My heart was thundering, but my hands were rock steady.
I found his bag, which he had left in the coat room near the office. I pulled the device from my clutch and synced it to his phone, which was on the table nearby. A loading bar appeared on my own screen: Data extraction in progress.
10%... 30%... 60%...
Every second felt like an hour. My skin prickled with the sensation of being watched. Suddenly, the door handle turned. I dove behind a heavy velvet curtain just as a shadow stepped into the room. It was Natalie.
She looked pale, thinner than before, her eyes darting around the room with a manic energy. She walked toward the phone, checking it, her fingers trembling. “Dominic, where are you?” she hissed to herself.
May you like
She was waiting for the signal—the signal that the accounts were cleared.
The progress bar on my screen reached 100%. Extraction Complete. I had it. Everything. Every offshore account, every hidden property, every email confirming the conspiracy. I tucked the device away and crept out of the room just as she turned around. I was invisible, a ghost in the machine.
