Ex-Alpha's Regret: Siren's Comeback novel Chapter 110

POV: Damian

The applause eventually faded. The crowd dissipated, a buzzing swarm of victors and new partners, all moving toward the celebration gala that Vance Capital was now hosting. I remained in my seat in the vast, empty auditorium, long after the lights had been dimmed. The air was thick with the ghosts of my failure.

On the massive screen above the stage, a loop of the winning bid's presentation played on. It cycled through charts and graphs, but always returned to the final slide: a sleek, corporate graphic displaying the core leadership of the new enterprise. And there, at the top, was her new name and her new title, the words a burning brand on my retinas.

SIREN

Chief Strategic Architect

Siren. The name echoed in the hollow space in my chest. A creature of myth whose beautiful song lured proud sailors to their doom on the rocks. The name was a taunt, a perfect, poetic summary of what she had just done to me.

For three years, I had been haunted by a phantom. A faceless, nameless mastermind who had been waging a silent, invisible war against me. The ghost who had guided Jax's clumsy rage and forged it into a series of precise, surgical strikes against my empire. The whisper that had turned my allies against me. The intellect that had outmaneuvered me at every turn.

And now, sitting in the ruins of my defeat, the pieces began to click into place with a horrifying, sickening slowness. Her face, her power, her name. The three years of unexplained failures. The two images, once separate, began to merge in my mind.

My Beta, Kael, approached, his footsteps hesitant on the carpeted aisle. He looked ashen, his usual composure shattered. He was holding a data slate, his hand trembling slightly.

"Alpha," he said, his voice a dry, croaking whisper. "I… I ran the analysis you asked for. The deep background check."

I didn't look at him. I couldn't tear my eyes from her name on the screen.

"Vance Capital's major expansion phase… their most aggressive and successful acquisitions… it began three years ago," Kael stammered, his voice barely audible. "The timeline is… precise. It began the week after… the week after we officially declared the Thorne family traitors."

My blood ran cold.

"And this woman… this Siren," he continued, his voice dropping even lower. "There is no record of her. No history. No past. It's as if she was born on that exact date. Three years ago. A ghost in the system."

He took a deep, shuddering breath, as if bracing himself to deliver a death blow.

"The final analysis is complete, Alpha. Our strategic division… they ran a comparative analysis of every hostile business action taken against us by Jax Thorne's network over the last three years. The decision-making models, the risk-assessment algorithms, the unique approach to profit calculation…"

And she had taken that talent—the very part of her I had sought to crush—and she had built a new world with it. An empire forged in the fires of my own making, for the sole purpose of burning mine to the ground.

The failed lithium deal in the Eastern territories two years ago… I could suddenly see her, moving the pieces, predicting my every move.

The sudden betrayal of the Ironfang Alpha last year, a political maneuver so subtle I never saw it coming… that was her whisper in his ear.

Jax's impossibly successful blockade of my shipping lanes… it wasn't his brute force. It was her elegant, ruthless strategy.

Every failure, every humiliation, every sleepless night spent fighting a shadow… it had all been Seraphina. She had been there all along, a ghost in my machine, pulling the strings of my demise.

A wave of ice washed through me, so cold it burned. My lungs seized. I couldn't draw a breath. The auditorium, the empty chairs, Kael's terrified face—it all blurred into a meaningless watercolor painting. The only thing in focus was her face on the screen. Her polite, professional smile now looked like the most vicious, triumphant smirk I had ever seen.

My hands flattened on the armrests, the leather groaning under the pressure. With a slow, grinding scrape of metal and polished wood, I pushed myself to my feet.