Chapter 187

Eira’s pov

The candle flickered, casting shadows on the wall like ghosts of the girls Snow betrayed. My fingers trembled as I turned another page in the ledger, its leather binding cracking under my grip.

Numbers. Names. Coordinates. It wasn’t just a list,it was a graveyard.

I cracked the code two hours ago. It came to me like muscle memory, patterns my body knew even if my brain resisted. The handwriting was neat, precise. Familiar. Cold.

Snow’s.

My sister’s.

Each page was another layer of horror. Girls,young, barely of age,labeled with initials, transaction codes, shipment routes. The margins had notes like condition: compliant, or needs sedation before transport. One had a star beside her name.

I didn’t want to know why.

“Eliza’s Gate,” I murmured, tracing my finger along the smudged ink. The name had appeared more than once. No address, just a string of numbers I quickly matched to a location. Washington.

Of course. The capital of secrets.

I leaned back, the chair creaking beneath me. My breath hitched in my chest. Not from fear. Not even from grief anymore. That had dried up three pages ago. What filled me now was darker. Heavier. Like iron behind my ribs.

Vengeance.

I looked around the crumbling walls of Snow’s old estate. The candle’s light barely lit the room, but it was enough to show the cracked portrait of us on the wall. Twin girls. Identical smiles. One dressed in soft lavender. The other in black.

I tore it down.

The frame hit the ground with a shatter that matched the way I felt inside.

She didn’t deserve my face.

She didn’t deserve me.

I packed in silence,fast, clean, automatic. Gear I hadn’t touched in years found its way into a duffel. Knives in the lining. Fake passports in a stitched pouch behind the zipper. A burner phone. Cash. The ledger.

Snow had sold girls. Used me. Lied to the world.

And now?

She would answer for every single sin.

But I couldn’t go as myself.

She had agents. Surveillance. Eyes. Ears.

So I became someone else. Again.

Dark brown wig. Neutral clothes. Contact lenses. Scar on the cheek,just deep enough to break recognition. The kind of disguise I used to wear on overseas hits.

I stared at my reflection one last time before I left.

“You took everything from me, Snow,” I whispered. “But I’m going to take it all back.”

The bus to D.C. was quiet. Rain tapped the windows in a steady rhythm. People came and went at stops, but I didn’t move. I clutched the duffel like it held my heart, eyes fixed on the road ahead.

My mind replayed the names in the ledger. Young girls. Most with no families. Some with criminal records. Easy to disappear.

I remembered one.

Camila M.

Fifteen.

Condition: defiant. beat into submission. shipment delayed.

I wanted to throw up.

Instead, I closed my eyes and pictured Snow’s smile the last time she hugged me. The way she tucked hair behind my ear. The way she whispered, You’re safe now.

Liar.

Monster.

The bus hissed to a stop. D.C. was cold. Wet. Unforgiving. It felt like it knew what I came to do.

Eliza’s Gate wasn’t a gate at all.

It was a front. A luxury wellness clinic nestled in Georgetown. White walls, tall glass, plants too green to be real. But the records in the ledger,shipment codes, incoming routes,all pointed to the basement of that very building.

I scoped it out for two days.

Disguised as a delivery girl. A clinic visitor. A government health inspector. No one noticed me. That’s the thing about predators,they never expect the prey to come back hunting.

I got in on the third night.

Security was tight, but I was tighter. A guard patrolled the north hall. I knocked him out cold with a jab to the carotid and dragged him behind the linen carts. No alarms. Just like training.

The basement was colder than the rest of the clinic. Cleaner, too. That sterile kind of clean that made your skin itch.

The elevator required a code. But guess what? Snow wrote everything down.

I punched it in. 1134.

It opened with a soft ding.

What waited for me below made my breath catch.

Cages.

Not metal bars, but glass. Transparent walls, sleek and soundproofed. Like luxury boxes in hell. Girls inside,some asleep, some just staring at the floor, some watching me like they didn’t dare believe rescue was even real.

I stepped forward. “My name is Eira. I’m getting you out.”

One girl, barely thirteen, flinched. “They said no one comes back.”

“I came back,” I said, and pulled out the keycard I found in the ledger.

Doors opened. One by one.

But I didn’t stop there. I stormed into the back room. The computers. The logs. The cameras. I tore them apart, ripped hard drives from sockets, smashed glass, spilled gasoline across everything.

I didn’t come for rescue.

I came for retribution.

“Snow,” I whispered as I lit the match, “you built your empire on broken girls. Now I’ll bury it in ash.”

The fire caught quick. Screams followed,but not of pain. Of freedom. The girls ran behind me, covered in blankets I shoved at them, coughing from smoke but alive.

One stopped beside me as we hit the alley.

Her voice cracked. “Who are you?”

I stared back at the flames consuming Snow’s secrets.

“The girl with no past,” I said. “And no mercy.”

But deep down I knew that something bigger was brewing.