Chapter 86 The Stage is Set
Brittany’s POV
The heavy doors of the anteroom clicked shut behind us, and the cool air of the corridor hit my skin like a bucket of ice water. My heart was still racing. I could still feel the phantom heat of David’s body against mine, the raw intensity of those nineteen minutes lingering in the way my legs felt slightly heavy. Sophia stood there, leaning on her silver-headed cane, her face an unreadable mask of granite.
"Adam just started," she repeated, her eyes scanning my face for a second too long. "And Harrison just left the balcony box. The snake is moving through the grass, children. Fix your hair."
I reached up, my fingers trembling as I smoothed a stray lock of hair back into the silver pin Elena had given me. David adjusted his cufflinks, his expression hardening back into the marble mask of a Blackwell, though his eyes still held that flicker of fire he had shown me in the dark. We didn't speak. There was no time for words. We turned as one and re-entered the ballroom.
The transition was jarring. We walked out of the silence and into a wall of sound and light. The ballroom had been transformed into a theater of theft. Adam’s presentation was already running on the massive LED screens that spanned the entire length of the stage. The images were breathtaking. The Sovereign Line was being rendered in high-resolution digital glory. I watched, my throat tightening, as every image stolen from my sketchbook flashed before the eyes of the world. Every curve of a collar, every specific fall of a hem, every secret detail I had bled over in that trailer was now displayed with Adam’s name in large, elegant typography.
"Look at them," David whispered, his hand finding the small of my back to guide me forward. "He’s giving them exactly what they want."
The room was rapt. I could see the press photographers huddled at the end of the runway, their lenses clicking in a frantic rhythm. The buyers from the big houses were leaning forward in their seats, their faces illuminated by the blue glow of the screens. It was everything Adam had intended. It was a moment of complete and total authority. He was taking thirty years of my mother’s stolen life and making it presentable, making it profitable, and making it a public celebration of his own genius.
We walked toward our positions near the front of the stage. David was on my left, a solid wall of support. Sophia walked on my right, her cane striking the floor with a rhythmic, authoritative thud. As we moved, I felt the room start to notice. The shift in the atmosphere was physical. People began to look away from the screens and toward me. They saw the woman in the midnight gown, and then they looked back at the digital renderings on the screen. The realization moved through the audience like a slow, cold wave. I was the gown. I was the living, breathing version of the art Adam was claiming as his own.
Adam was mid-sentence, standing at the podium with a spotlight cutting through the darkness. He was talking about "heritage" and "the future of the Blackwell aesthetic." He saw us. I watched his eyes land on me, then David, then Sophia. His voice didn't falter. He was a professional thief, after all. Professionals of his caliber didn't break in public. They didn't gasp or stutter when the ghost walked into the room. But his eyes began to track my every movement. I saw the specific, sharp attention of a man watching his carefully constructed world develop a hairline fracture.
"He’s terrified," I murmured, my gaze locked on Adam’s pale face.
"He should be," Sophia said, her voice a low, raspy growl. "He’s standing on a floor made of thin glass."
We reached the edge of the stage and stopped. I stood tall, the midnight silk of my skirts pooling around my feet. I wanted him to see me. I wanted him to look at the feathers on my bodice and know that he could never reproduce the soul behind the stitch. Adam’s presentation reached its crescendo. The music swelled, a deep, industrial bass that vibrated in my chest. He gestured toward the screen behind him, ready to reveal the final lineup of the Sovereign Line.
"And now," Adam’s voice rang out over the speakers, "the pinnacle of the Blackwell legacy."
The screens behind him suddenly flickered. It wasn't the smooth transition I expected. It was a sharp, jagged glitch that made the audience blink. I thought it was Leo. I thought this was the hack we had planned, the moment where David’s evidence would flood the room. But the timing was wrong. Leo wasn't supposed to move for another three minutes.
"Is that Leo?" I asked David, my voice tight.
"No," David said, his brow furrowing as he stared at the monitors. "He’s still waiting for my signal."
The flicker happened again, a flash of static that turned the bright, polished images of Adam’s models into a mess of gray lines. Adam turned around, his jaw dropping for a split second before he caught himself. He hissed something to the AV team in his earpiece, his face turning a blotchy red under the stage lights.
"Fix it!" he barked, though the microphone caught the edge of his panic.
The screens didn't go black. Instead, a different image appeared on every single monitor in the room. It wasn't the high-resolution digital renders. It wasn't the Blackwell logo. It was a photograph of a piece of yellowed, vintage paper.
I felt the air leave my lungs. I knew that paper. I knew the weight of the charcoal lines and the specific way the ink had bled into the grain over three decades. It was a photograph of Clara Redman's original sketches. The images were dated thirty years ago, the timestamp clear and undeniable at the bottom of the frame. The designs were identical to every single line currently being sold on the screens as the Sovereign Line. Every stitch, every silhouette, every unique flourish was there, drawn by a hand that had been dead to the world for years.
The room went completely silent. The only sound was the hum of the cooling fans in the projectors. Adam stood frozen in the spotlight, the image of my mother’s genius towering over him like a giant. People in the audience were gasping, their heads whipping back and forth between the stage and the screens.
I looked at the corner of the sketches. There, in my mother’s unmistakable, flowing handwriting, were two words that seemed to glow in the darkness of the ballroom.
The screens behind Adam suddenly flicker — not Leo's hack, not yet, something else entirely — and for three seconds, before the AV team corrects it, a different image appears on every screen in the room. It is a photograph of Clara Redman's original sketches. Dated thirty years ago. Identical to every line on the screens. And in the corner of each sketch, in Clara's handwriting, are two words: Phoenix Line.