The Thorne Heiress Unveiling Shadow novel Chapter 75

The moment the doors of the penthouse office slid shut, the polished social masks they had worn all evening dissolved. The mission was back on.

Evelyn walked directly to the main console, pulling the scanner ring from her finger. The small device was cool against her skin. She placed it in the data port, and a perfect, three-dimensional wireframe of the Ouroboros ring appeared on the massive screen.

"Run a full structural analysis," she commanded the system. "Magnify to the sub-millimeter level."

Kaelen was already on his own terminal, his voice a low, commanding growl as he issued orders to his own team. "I want everything you can find on a European aristocrat known only as ‘The Duchess.' Financial records, political affiliations, travel logs. I want to know where she sleeps, what she eats, and who pays her bills. Use any means necessary."

He was attacking from the outside, using his vast resources to build a profile. She was going inside.

The image of the ring on the screen rotated slowly. To the naked eye, it was flawless. But Evelyn knew the secret wasn't on the surface. It was always hidden in the details the powerful thought no one was clever enough to look for.

"Isolate the inner band," she said. "Magnify by ten thousand."

The image zoomed in, the smooth, polished gold becoming a vast, textured landscape. And there it was.

It was a code, almost invisible, etched into the very grain of the metal with a precision laser. It wasn't a maker's mark or a serial number. It was a string of alphanumeric characters.

A digital key.

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