The Adams crest was every four meters within the marble. The same crest stamped on announcements, contracts, birth certificates. The emblem that had been branded into my life before I could spell it.


    I put my hand on the door knob, smoothed my dress, and opened the door.


    Alexander didn’t look up.


    He didn’t need to. The spreadsheets across his screens had his attention. Three phonesid to one side. A fourth buzzed and was silenced with a flick of his fingertip.


    “You’rete,” he said. Not angry, just marking it for the record that I had disappointed him before I even spoke.


    “I—”


    He sliced the air with two fingers.


    “The Veil ount is gone,” he added, eyes still on the monitor. “Don’t embarrass yourself with theatrics. It was Adams property. You represent us. It isn’t yours to mourn.”


    Not mine.


    Three years of nights answeringments until my vision doubled, morning filming on two hours of sleep while a handler dabbed concealer under my eyes. Three years of building a version of myself big enough to drown out the version they preferred. Not mine?


    “It was my face,” I said. The words came out too even. “My voice. My life.”


    Alexander’s eyes lifted an inch. Just enough to make it clear he was indulging me.


    “And who paid for the face that sells?” he asked. “The lights? The teams? The dynasty. Try not to confusebor with ownership, Emilia.” His gaze returned to the screen. “Be grateful itsted as long as it did. Most girls are retired at neen.”


    Retired. Like an app that stops receiving updates and gets quietly removed from the store.


    He tapped a folder on the desk. “They’ll runch you after your birthday. Fresh branding. Stronger positioning.“


    “Rebrand,” I repeated, because if I didn’t keep my mouth moving, I might say something I couldn’t take back.


    “Correct. Your audience will migrate. We’ll seed the pipeline for three days and flip the switch Sunday at noon. New narrative, new metrics. Vales’ tech team has mocked two directions. Galleo’s people submitted three. Salvere insists they can do better on sentiment scores by anchoring you to charity work—they’re wrong, but they’ll pay for a g if we let them think it was their idea.”


    Vale, Galleo, Salvere. Families who measured love in holdings and call it legacy. Just like every other dynasty.


    Alexander slid the folder toward me with a fingernail.


    “Your bloodwork came back.”


    I didn’t touch the folder.


    “Markers are excellent. AMH and FSH inside optimal bands. Bone density good. Cogen integrity exceptional for your age. Inmmation profile low. Cardiovascr markers clean. All noted without any enchantments.” He paused. “Frankly, you should be ttered. You’ve aged better than expected.”


    It was almost apliment. Just back handed, delivered with an Adams nod of approval.


    “It makes securing a deal simple,” He tapped another tab. Numbers shifted.


    “Deal?”


    “Marriage,” he corrected. “You turn twenty-one this weekend. No more dys. We should close within the week. You’ll receive house colors by Friday. Wear them Saturday night. The photos will read as intent.”


    “So you’ve already decided,” As per normal, I am thest to know.


    “We shortlisted three months ago.” Alexander adjusted a cufflink that didn’t need adjusting. “We floated numbers. We asked for quiet concessions. One house controls water and ports. One controls air. One controls data. All three control narrative. We prefer water for obvious reasons, but we’ll take leverage wherever it’s correctly priced.”


    “And me?” I asked. “How are my prices calcted?”


    That earned me the smallest smile. “Your price is the multiplier, Emilia. Your name takes on the value of the merger. You know this.”


    I looked down at the folder.


    EMILIA ADAMS — Q3 PERSONAL HEALTH // PUBLIC SENTIMENT SWEEP // MERGER READINESS.


    Someone had paper-clipped a photo mockup to the front: the Adams crest ghosted behind the Vale sigil, like it was already a watermark.


    “Do I get a choice?” I asked.


    “You have choices every day.” He said it like he was tired of repeating something. “You chose to be twelve minuteste. You chose to wear ck when the color sheet for this week specified cream. You chose to let handlers manage your calendar remotely because you resent being told where to be. Free will hasn’t been revoked, Emilia. We’ve simply outlined the limits in which it can operate without costing us money.”


    “Us,’” I repeated. “You mean you.”


    “I mean Adams,” he said, the correction gentle, as if I were a child mibeling something.


    “And Veil? Three years of posts, gone. Themunity. The messages. All the stories—mine. Why kill it?”


    “Because it served its purpose,” he silenced another phone call. “It created a soft silhouette. It made you visible to households that don’t attend gs. It rallied girls who won’t matter to a ledger but matter to a narrative. Now we don’t need the noise of your adolescence attached to the story of your marriage. We need clean lines. We delete what muddies them.”<fnc41f> For more chapters visit find?novel</fnc41f>


    “They’re people. Not a campaign.”


    “They’re audiences,” he corrected kindly. “Audiences are constructed. They can be re-constructed. Your new profile will retain what matters: your face, your tone, the part of your ‘voice’ we tested as appealing. The rest—old posts, old tags, any mention of rtionships that don’t suit the next quarter—goes. We don’t want a food blog where a dynasty wedding should be.”


    Heat flooded up my throat so fast I had to swallow hard to keep it from spilling. Rtionships that don’t suit. In other words ast name the Dynasties don’t like to say out loud.


    Fingers that used to trace my mouth in the dark, a voice that used to call me baby like the word meant home.


    “Did you think you could keep it forever?” Alexander asked, genuinely curious. “An asset we didn’t own?”


    “It was me,”


    “That is the trick you girls never quite grasp. The you you believe in—your preferences, your improvisations—that is the part we are selling, yes. But ownership is not about intimacy, it’s about capital. And capital belongs to those who can scale it.”


    I wanted to throw something. Instead I adjusted the bracelet at my wrist until the sp bit.


    “What about the retirement you mentioned? The rebrand after the wedding. The stepping down at twenty-five.”


    “Public stepping down. You’ll still be useful, just not as a performance. You’ll be seen when required. You’ll disappear when it services the story. We can talk details after your birthday.”


    “And the heir,” I said, because he would anyway.


    Alexander folded his hands again. “One is sufficient. The Codex insists. The child will not be raised by you—it will belong to the dynasty. Tutors. Handlers. Protocol. This should not surprise you. It is the system that raised you.”


    “I don’t want my child recorded as property,”


    He blinked, not in confusion, just gearing for an exnation. “No one records children as property. We record lineage. The ledger is a map of inheritance, not a deed of ownership.”


    “You can name the map anything you like. I want my name on it. The ledger. Under ‘mother.’ Not just dynasty.”


    He took longer to respond than I expected. One heartbeat, two, three. A silent add-up of costs.


    “That is negotiable,” he said finally, and I could hear the use he’d add in the email to counsel: if she insists, concede annotation; ensure it has no practical effect. “It won’t matter in practice. You won’t raise them.”


    “I know. But I won’t be erased.”


    “You know what I appreciate about you? You don’t confuse boundaries for cruelty. You understand we all serve somethingrger than ourselves.”


    “Do we?” I asked.


    He smiled. “Those who don’t end up poor.”


    I thought of the girls we’d fed on Veil—small brands run from kitchen tables, mothers who DM’d at midnight because thement section ate them alive and they needed someone to tell them they weren’t a failure because their toddler wouldn’t wear shoes. I thought of thete nights I posted for them instead of sleeping. How they said thank you like it had saved them. How I believed it might have saved me too.


    “Stop being sentimental,” he said, as if he’d heard it. “You’re not losing anything that matters. You’re exchanging it.”


    “For what? Silence dressed as safety?”


    “For power you can actually use. For a name your children will not have to rent.”


    “Schedule,” Alexander started typing again. “You have fittings at two. You have a press brush at four. You will post a statement at eight acknowledging the transition of your digital presence and thanking our munity’ for their support while announcing the birthday program. Language is in the draft. Don’t improvise.”


    My mouth twisted. “You want me to thank people I’ll never be allowed to speak to again.”


    “I want you to behave like a professional,” he said.


    “And if I don’t?” I asked.


    He met my eyes for the first time. “Then you will learn what it costs to confuse your preferences with our n.”


    He slid onest page across to me, this one with three columns and no header.


    “You’ll wear A’s colors Saturday,” he tapped the first column. “If they fail to meet the floor, we move to B Monday. If B postures, we punish them with a leak and move to C. Either way, you will be engaged by next Friday.”


    There it was, the week carved into decisions I didn’t make and would live with for the rest of my life.


    “What if I say no?”


    Alexander’s answer was quiet. “To whom?”


    “To all of it.”


    His mouth softened like he pitied me. “Then you will choose a smaller version of this life, and someone else will choose therger version. But the dynasty will make its deal with or without you, Emilia. You know this.” He gestured at the folder I hadn’t opened. “The numbers don’t wait for feelings.”


    He paused then, like he’d remembered something else on his schedule. “And don’t bete for Father’s inheritance reading on your birthday. Noon sharp.”


    My throat tightened. “Do you know what it is?”


    “No. Likely a charity. It’s sealed until the reading.”


    The door behind me opened. A handler slipped in, eyes down, tablet ready. “Excuse me, sir. Ms. Adams’s driver is waiting.”


    Alexander stood, signaling the end the way men like him signaled most things: by moving on. “Wear cream for the fitting. No ck for forty-eight hours. It photographs as grief.”


    “Maybe that’s because it is,”


    He chose not to hear me. “You’ve done well. Better than expected. Don’t waste it.”


    The handler held the door. I picked up the folder, and felt the weight of myself inside it. Data points dressed as destiny.


    I followed the handler walked past the four security guards and stepped outside. I found myself staring at the folder for a moment. Then I folded it into my bag.


    Pulling my phone out. Staring down at the three messages from Charlotte and Vivienne.


    Only my best friends could get me to smile after a meeting like that.


    I nced up, that was first my mistake. The second mistake was making eye contract with him.


    This could not be happening.


    Luca Crow.