The Thorne Heiress Unveiling Shadow novel Chapter 91

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Evelyn's words hung in the silent, crowded room. They were a final, perfect humiliation.

Claudia Lancaster stared at her, her face a mask of disbelief that quickly crumbled into pure, unrestrained hatred. The carefully constructed elegance she had worn her whole life fell away, revealing the ugly, raw rage beneath.

For a moment, it seemed like she might lunge across the room. Her hands clenched into fists at her sides, her knuckles white. The diamonds on her fingers bit into her own skin.

But she didn't. She looked around at the faces of the guests. She saw their pity, their scorn, their morbid curiosity. She, Claudia Lancaster, had become a sideshow.

She let out a sound, a low, guttural noise that was halfway between a sob and a snarl. Without another word, she turned and stormed out of the room. Her bodyguards scrambled to follow, pushing guests out of the way.

The moment she was gone, the room erupted in a low buzz of conversation.

Kaelen leaned in close to Evelyn. "The animal is cornered," he murmured, his voice low. "It will be at its most dangerous now."

Evelyn watched the empty doorway, her expression calm and cold. "I know," she said. "That's the point."

In the days that followed, Claudia Lancaster vanished. Her townhouses in New York and London were empty. Her private jet sat cold on a runway in Geneva. The Syndicate, her global network of terror and influence, went silent. It was as if a switch had been flipped, plunging a sprawling, noisy machine into an eerie, unnatural quiet.

In the joint command center, a space now permanently established in the secure wing of Thorne Crest, the silence was more unnerving than any open attack. The initial thrill of victory had faded, replaced by a tense, heavy sense of anticipation.

"She's hiding," Chase said, pacing back and forth behind the main console. "Licking her wounds. She's humiliated, and she's angry. That makes her dangerous."

Kaelen, patched in via a secure, life-sized video link from his own office, nodded in agreement. His face was grim. "My intelligence teams have hit a wall. Her known properties are empty. Her jets are grounded. She has dropped off the face of the earth. It's a classic ghost protocol."

Evelyn said nothing. She was staring at a screen filled with a complex, swirling mass of data. For the past week, she had been trying to do what she did best: go into the dark and find the secrets. She had aimed the full power of Shadow at the digital infrastructure of the Lancaster family.