Chapter 77 The Morning of the Gala
Brittany’s POV
The clock on the studio wall had barely clicked over to five in the morning when my eyes opened. I didn't move. I didn't reach for my phone. I just lay there in the silence of the guest suite, staring at the shadows dancing on the ceiling. I felt the full weight of the day pressing down on my chest like a physical object. Harrison Blackwell was alive. The man who had haunted my mother’s life was sitting in a balcony box somewhere, waiting to see if his latest experiment would survive the night. I let that weight settle. I let it push the air out of my lungs for exactly sixty seconds, feeling every ounce of the pressure. Then, I reached out and lifted it. I set it aside on the nightstand, metaphorically packing it away with the silver mask and the old sketches. I got up.
I walked down the quiet hallway, my bare feet silent on the cold floors. When I reached the studio, I stopped in the doorway. The early morning light was just beginning to bleed through the high windows, turning the room into a cavern of blue and gold. There, in the center of the room, Elena had laid out the closing look on the dress form. It was pressed perfectly, every seam sharp, every fold of the midnight silk exactly where it needed to be. The fabric caught the light in a way that made it look alive, like a dark ocean frozen in time.
I stayed there for a long moment, just looking at it. I could see my mother’s design language in every curve of the bodice. I could feel her presence in the weight of the hem. This wasn't just a dress anymore. It was an answer. Thirty years of theft, thirty years of silence and hiding in trailers and cottages, were about to be answered in front of the most powerful people in the world. I reached out and touched the silk, my fingers tracing the line of the waist.
"It’s ready," a voice said from the shadows.
I didn't jump. I knew Elena’s voice now. I turned to see her standing by the steaming station, her face calm and professional, as if the middle of the night confession had never happened. As if we weren't all playing a part in a play written by a dead man. She didn't look like a spy. She looked like the woman who had helped me find the right shade of thread.
"It’s ready," I agreed.
I went back to the suite and changed into a simple day outfit. Black trousers, a thin white sweater, and boots that meant business. I didn't want to feel the silk yet. I wanted to feel the ground. When I returned to the studio, Elena was waiting with a cup of coffee. I took it from her and drank it down, feeling the heat hit my throat, but I didn't taste a single drop of it. My mind was already miles away, at the venue, mapping the exits and the entrances.
"Leo is waiting in the tactical room," Elena said, her eyes meeting mine for a split second. There was no apology in them, only the cold reality of the job. "He says the encryption is holding."
I nodded and walked toward the basement stairs. The tactical room was humming with the sound of servers and cooling fans. Leo was hunched over his monitors, his face pale in the blue light. He didn't look up when I entered. He just pointed to the tablet sitting on the edge of his desk.
"Everything is confirmed," Leo said, his voice scratchy from lack of sleep. "I’ve run the diagnostic on the venue feed six times. The balcony box Sophia identified is under constant surveillance. We have a thermal signature. Someone is definitely in that space, Brittany. They’ve been there since three AM."
I picked up the tablet and began the final checklist. We went through it for forty minutes, a relentless litany of names and codes. Every detail had to be perfect. One slip, one missed connection, and Harrison would slip back into the shadows forever.
"The server download is verified?" I asked.
"Multiple backups," Leo replied, his fingers flying across the keys. "Cloud, physical, and a localized burst transmitter. If they kill the power at the gala, the files will still hit the press servers the moment the backup generator kicks in."
"Good."
I sat at the small desk in the corner and began sending the messages. These were the individual pulses that would set the machine in motion. I sent one to Daisy, telling her to move to the safe house. I sent one to David's attorney, confirming the filing times. I messaged Judge Crane, who replied with a single word: Proceed.
I even messaged the contact for Rosa's handler. That was the most dangerous part. We were feeding Harrison’s network a stream of false information, leading them to believe we were planning a surprise witness at the beginning of the show. We wanted them focused on the stage, not the balcony. We wanted Harrison to feel safe in his seat until the very last second.
Once the last message was sent, I closed my phone and set it face down on the desk. The digital world was locked. Now, it was just me and the time remaining. I felt a sudden, sharp need for something quiet. I reached into my bag and pulled out my sketchbook. It was the one I had carried since the day I met David, the one filled with the Phoenix Line and the scribbled notes about silk and shadow.
I opened it to a blank page. The paper was crisp and white, a vast empty space in a world that felt too crowded. I picked up a charcoal pencil and started to move. I didn't think about what I was doing. I didn't plan the lines or the shading. I just let my hand move, guided by the tension in my shoulders and the heat in my chest.
For ten minutes, the only sound in the room was the scratching of the charcoal. Leo stayed focused on his screens. The servers hummed. I felt the pencil wear down as I worked on the eyes, then the jawline, then the specific way the hair fell across a forehead. It was a quick sketch, rough and jagged, but the likeness was unmistakable.
I looked at what I had drawn. It was David. Not the billionaire in the suit, and not the man who owned the mansion. It was the man from the balcony. The man who had spent a year looking for a girl he didn't know because he heard a heartbeat in a dress. He looked tired in the drawing. He looked like a man who was ready for the war to be over.
I stared at the portrait for a long time, the charcoal dust staining my fingers. My hand moved again, hovering over the margin beside his face. I didn't plan the words. I didn't even know I was thinking them until they appeared on the paper in my own messy, hurried handwriting. I stared at those three words as if they belonged to someone else. They were the most honest things I had written in years. They were the only things that mattered more than the dresses or the theft. I sat there in the blue light of the basement, the morning of the gala finally breaking outside, and I let the truth of those words sink in.
It is a portrait, rough but unmistakable, of David — and in the margin beside it, without having planned to write it, she has written three words in her own handwriting that she stares at for a long time before she closes the book.