With hasty strides, Caspian hurried Celeste along the marbled corridors of the courthouse, their footsteps echoing in the mid-morning hush. Bright overhead lights painfully illuminated the tension flickering in their eyes. Outside, Soren's legal team roamed the entry hall, hissing like vultures awaiting a foul-up. With every sideways step and over-the-shoulder sideways glance, the feeling of imminent confrontation built as if, at any minute, a last wall would rise to prevent them from obtaining the paperwork that would ground their marriage—and, by extension, Caspian's hold on Hayes Enterprises.
They arrived at the county registrar's cramped office, a room littered with vertical stacks of manila folders and a scattering of dog-eared law books. The registrar, a stout man with wire-rimmed glasses, gave them a polite nod, but his tired gaze showed that he was well aware of the Montague family's high-stakes squabbles. He motioned them forward and opened a new packet of official documents that would correct the error in their marriage certification. Celeste breathed a sigh of relief; this moment felt like a small crack in the door to allow her to claim her place as Caspian's wife—no longer subject to Soren's interference.
She placed her purse on the desk and rifled through it for identification and the required approvals. Conscience stirred; Caspian hung close, eyes sweeping behind them in the hallway. They'd just realized, only last night, the flaw in their earlier paperwork—a clever, manipulative move on Soren's part to put their marital status in jeopardy. Each pen stroke across these pages now felt like reclaiming the power he'd stolen. Marriage license The registrar read the lines carefully, applying a firm stamp of authenticity in each space.
Just as the clerk was about to finalize a signature, Soren's lawyers swooped in—two solemn-faced men in immaculate suits. They paused in the doorway and struck a pose of authority. One of the lawyers, tall and lean, had a folder of neatly bound papers. "We have concerns about the legitimacy of these documents," he said. Caspian stiffened. Celeste heard the quiet menace in the lawyer's measured words. She pictured Soren, somewhere in the building, setting up a last-minute roadblock.
The clerk looked over his glasses, unsure. Tension crackled. Caspian's pulse hammered. He stared down at the lawyers, his voice tinged with controlled rage. "We've met every single requirement," he said, gesturing toward each meticulously filled-out line. "My dad can't scare us out of this."
The clerk paused heavily, then resumed signing as the lawyers hissed their protests. Caspian squeezed Celeste's hand, a tsunami of relief washing over her as the last stamp cemented the certification. In immediate possession of their renewed license, they flew back from the registrar's office, hearts racing in victory. But in the hallway, one of Soren's lawyers fell in step, leaning forward with a frosty grin. "Legal papers won't save you from what's coming," he murmured, turning his back on them, with Caspian and Celeste reeling again from the relentless magnitude of Soren's war.
Talia finally located Sterling Price at the estate's seldom-used study, a room lined with dusty shelves of law tomes and battered ledgers. The only lamp on the mahogany desk produced long shadows, leaving Sterling to be seen in silhouette—a force of suppressed menace. When he motioned for her to come inside, she steeled herself, remembering how he had earlier ordered her to betray Caspian and Celeste. Her heart leapt, but she wouldn't bend her head.
He looked up from a neatly stapled stack of papers, his posture relaxed but his gaze penetrating. "You took longer than I thought," he said in a flat voice. "I figured maybe you'd lost your nerve." Talia shot her a scornful glare. "Father," she said, keeping her voice as steady as she could, "why can't you let Caspian lead in peace? This family has been through more than enough. Soren's manipulating is already bad enough — do you have to add to the mess?"
Sterling put aside his reading glasses. He took a deep breath, allowing tension to thicken the air. "We are Montagues," he announced, fingertips tapping out a slow tick on the desk. "We don't take half measures. Caspian's leadership puts at risk the legacy we've made. Soren needed a partner, and I filled in." There was something almost unapologetically greedy in the way he said it, and Talia gripped her teeth. Flooded with memories — her father's sly smiles, deals made behind closed doors, the moments she convinced herself that his slyness was in the best interest of the family. Now, she saw the threats he cultivated.
She moved closer, her voice shaking with rage. "Caspian is trying to pull Hayes Enterprises back from Soren's rot. Celeste is innocent. Why destroy them?" Sterling quirked an eyebrow at her indignation as he rifled through a desk drawer. He pulled out a small electronic device — her bug, the one she had planted in Celeste's room on Soren's orders, to her eternal chagrin.
It, he twirled between his fingers, a sardonic half-smile twisting his lips. "You pledged me fealty once," he said softly. "And you obey Soren's orders to some degree. And now you're mooning over Caspian and Celeste like a stray puppy. "Which side are you on, Talia?" She stared at the bug, her heart racing while guilt and defiance battled each other inside her.
She took a shaky breath. "I never promised to cause them pain. A legacy this family brought on themselves should not force us to destroy one another." Sterling's gaze grew even colder, a glint of warning shining against the darkness of his eyes. "You know what to do, then. Either turn over Celeste's secrets or watch the empire you pretend to save collapse." Talia hesitated, but the bug flashed in her mind, its sickening purpose, its ability to regurgitate Celeste's vulnerable thoughts, any whisper that might be used against her. Her father's judgment pressed down on her in waves, and she almost heard the shadow of disapproval that would surely follow should she refuse. When her eyes met the bug in his hand, a wave of nausea struck her stomach. She did not know what to do then if she would see Sterling's demand through to its end or crush it now. Unable to see any way out from her father's iron grip, she stood frozen before a crossroads that might forever imprison Caspian and Celeste's fate. Panic buzzed across the upstairs floors of Hayes Enterprises. Shouting voices and racing technicians filled the halls, and a restless urgency quivered in the air. Caspian stalked into the heart of operations—a glass-enclosed room filled with rows and rows of workstations—only to meet an eerie silence marked by an undercurrent of desperate keystrokes. Each console blinked red with the dire message, System Access Denied. He noticed a cluster of IT specialists converging at the largest of the consoles, masks of fear dulling their features. One looked up at him, her breaths shallow and quick. "It's a hack. Soren's people did it. They've scrubbed our admin control database, locked us out of financials, project management—everything."
Caspian's stomach lurched. He thought of Soren's promise to rip him and his company apart and how every phase of this battle had been uglier than the one before it. "How bad is it?" he asked, voice tight. The specialist frowned. "We can't pay vendors, can't do payroll. Our whole operation is frozen until we can get this right." Silence fell around them, employees standing by with tight faces, longing to be led.
Celeste came in, pale but determined. She surveyed the panicked clump and the glow of red error screens. Moments later, Roman joined them, brandishing a laptop. "I've attempted to bypass their code from an offsite server," he said, "but every attempt is met with a fail-safe. They've wired the system to fail if we go too far."
Casting his gaze at the silent workers, Caspian understood that this crisis could destroy the firm's public confidence if not quickly resolved. Rage surged alongside a familiar pang of helplessness. "We can't fold," he muttered. "We need time to dial an internal patch or a professional cyber-team." Then, almost on cue, his phone beeped. A new email appeared on the screen, each line oozing venom: "Resign or your company dies with you."
His voice is soft and steady, and he reads the words aloud. Employees stared, with some swapping nervous whispers. Caspian had felt her shoulders quake as she reached a shaking hand to his shoulder. "Does he expect that from you, too?" she said, voice shaking with rage. Roman muttered a curse, scanning the code on his laptop. "This is Soren's last-ditch effort — wreck the finances, send the board into a tailspin, make Caspian resign in some bid to prevent the company from melting down."
Caspian's veins pulse with defiance. He met Celeste's eyes and remembered how they had barely legitimated their marriage just days before. Now, all they'd risked destroying with their work risked destruction at Soren's hands. "We will not submit to blackmail," he said defiantly, voice resonating in front of tense faces. Still, a chill ran through the group as they all felt the noose tightening around them.
After a tense beat, Talia showed up, expression grim. She glimpsed the monitors, the panic spread across each coworker's face. "We're under siege," she whispered, remembering the deathless alliance her father made with Soren. With systems locked down, stock prices quaking on the precipice and employees fearful for their livelihoods, the real war, as Caspian recognized, had commenced. His father planned to bow the empire down before him if he couldn't have it himself.