The Thorne Heiress Unveiling Shadow novel Chapter 8

Her new suite of rooms was breathtaking. It wasn't just a bedroom; it was an entire wing of the manor.

It comprised a sprawling bedroom with a four-poster bed, a sitting room with its own fireplace, a library filled with first editions, and a marble bathroom the size of the Suttons' entire living room. The floor-to-ceiling windows offered a panoramic, unobstructed view of the roaring Atlantic.

Anyone else would have been overwhelmed, dizzy with the sheer scale of the luxury. Aria would have spent hours taking selfies for her Instagram.

Evelyn simply walked through the rooms, her footsteps silent on the priceless antique rugs. She ran a hand over a velvet chaise lounge, tested the weight of a leather-bound book. She was assessing it, not reveling in it. This was a new operational base, not a fairytale castle.

After a brief tour, she found what she was looking for: privacy and security. The doors were solid oak, the locks were heavy and old-fashioned, impossible to pick with conventional tools. Satisfied, she locked the door to the main bedroom.

She knelt and placed her one, pathetic-looking canvas bag on the floor. To any observer, it was a symbol of her previous, impoverished life. To Evelyn, it was a Trojan horse.

She unzipped the main compartment and removed the false bottom. Underneath, nestled in high-density foam, was not a collection of trinkets, but a single piece of technology.

It was a laptop, but it bore no branding. Its casing was a dull, non-reflective matte black, crafted from a hardened composite alloy used in military applications. It was thin, dense, and utterly featureless except for a single, unmarked biometric scanner where the trackpad should be.

Evelyn pressed her thumb to the scanner. The screen flickered to life, not with a welcoming logo, but with lines of cascading code, a security check that verified her identity against a dozen encrypted markers. The operating system was a custom build, a ghost that couldn't be traced or hacked by any known agency.

Within seconds, she established a secure, multi-layered satellite connection, bouncing the signal between three different continents before it reached its final destination.

"Stay on it," Evelyn ordered. "I want to know every move they make."

"Understood, Shadow."

The call ended.

Evelyn closed the laptop, the screen going dark instantly. She sat there for a moment in the opulent, silent room. The rescued princess, the long-lost heiress, had been safely returned to her castle.

But the world didn't know the truth. She wasn't the one who needed protecting. She was Shadow. And she was a queen who had just come home to her real throne.