The silence of Louise’s private room is not peaceful, it’s the volatile quiet of a bomb before goes off.

She stands before the floor-to-ceiling mirror, her reflection a jagged contrast to the pristine, immaculate image she has spent her entire life trying to legitimize.

The soot from the engagement pavilion has been scrubbed from her skin, leaving her cheeks raw and burning, but the invisible stain of public humiliation remains.

Her silk evening gown is gone, replaced by a stark white robe that feels less like luxury and more like a shroud for her dead ambitions.

With a sudden, choked snarl, Louise strikes out. Her hand collides with a crystal vase on the vanity, sending it shattering across the marble floor. Lilies and shards of glass scatter like shrapnel.

"Incompetent, worthless pigs," she whispers, her voice a razor-sharp hiss that trembles with terrifying, unadulterated rage.

The engagement party was supposed to be her ultimate coronation, even if she didn’t want to be engaged to that coward.

Every variable had been calculated to perfection to prove she remained at the top.

She’s the one born out of wedlock, the bastard daughter who had to claw, manipulate, and bleed just to secure a fragile foothold in a high-society world that looked down its nose at her.

This alliance with Leon was meant to cement her status forever. Even if she didn’t want it.

Her plan had been ruthless and entirely foolproof.

She remembers the low-ranking kitchen servant she had subtly bought weeks ago—a pathetic man whose gambling debts made him easy to use, and whose inevitable disappearance from the lower districts would register as nothing to anyone.

She personally handed him the velvet pouch containing the tasteless, untraceable toxin. Just three drops into Leon’s glass of champagne, right before the toast.

If the plan had been executed, Leon would be a corpse, the engagement would be severed by tragedy, and Louise would have won.

Even if the assassination couldn’t be traced directly back to her, she had designed two beautiful, flawless plans in case.

The first path was in the case of a violent escalation. If Lady Dimitra discovered Louise’s hand behind the poison, the matriarch would inevitably launch a full-scale retaliatory war against Louise’s mother, Lady Alice.

Louise knew her mother’s faction would lose that war, but not before Alice tore off a pound of Dimitra’s flesh in return—perhaps even more.

With both matriarchs crippled and bleeding their immense resources, Louise would easily step over their weakened bodies to claim the vacuum of power.

The second path was pure opportunism. If Lady Dimitra suspected Orion of the assassination—knowing the lunatic’s disdain for his family’s alliances—she would strike at him.

Then, the chaos of it, Louise would step into the fray, presenting herself to Orion not as a submissive bride, but as an indispensable asset.

An informant inside the Vassilis and Dubois network. A queen capable of matching his shadow play.

Instead, her grand stage has been reduced to ash. The engagement party exploded. The disposable servant is undoubtedly nothing but bone and ash in the rubble.

Her flawless chess game didn’t just fail— the entire board was flipped upside down by an invisible hand, dragging her dignity through the dirt before all the elites.

And the architect of her ruin?

A hysterical, manic roar echoes in her mind, repeating the frantic accusations Peter had screamed in the hospital lounge before his spine was snapped.

Adrien.

The legitimate Dubois family heir. The golden boy who had the world handed to him on a silver platter, only to throw it all away and run into the gutters at seventeen for reasons no one could understand. Except him.

For years, she had rejoiced in his absence, happily stepping into the vacuum he left behind, assuming the crown he had carelessly discarded.

Yet here he is, emerging from the dark to drag a shadowy syndicate like Masamune directly to their doorstep.

Louise grips the edges of the marble vanity so hard her manicured nails threaten to split against the stone.

It makes her sick. It makes her blood boil to the point of physical nausea. She wanted to kill that bastard herself the moment Peter uttered his name.

She wanted to wrap her own hands around Adrien’s throat and choke the life out of him for ruining her plans.

Watching Peter lunge at him to do it for her had felt like a brief, beautiful moment of divine justice. She had leaned forward, her heart racing with anticipation, waiting to watch the man paint the hospital floor with that idiot’s blood.

Then Orion intervened.

The memory plays back in slow motion. Orion hadn’t just protected Adrien, he moved with the speed of a man defending his prize.

A single hand. A sickening crack. Peter, a billionaire heir to a massive shipping empire, dropped like a sack of wet flour, discarded like garbage.

And then Orion had walked out, carrying Adrien by the wrist like a precious gem he had no intention of sharing with the world.

Louise’s chest heaves violently beneath her robe. Her breathing is shallow, ragged, and hot with rage.

Why?

The question tears through her mind, a jagged blade of pure, agonizing jealousy. Why couldn’t she be the one Orion protected like that?

She’s spent every waking hour perfecting her posture, her breeding, her intellect, and her strategic mind to erase the stain of her birth.

She’s a diamond polished to a lethal edge.

Adrien is a runaway who abandoned his lineage, a trembling, mouthy rat who looks like he is about to vomit or faint every time the wind blows too hard.

’What exactly does Adrien have that I don’t?’ Louise screams internally, her reflection staring back at her with wide, manic eyes.

’What does he give Orion that I can’t offer?’

Does Orion look at that runaway heir and see a fallen diamond worth collecting? Or does he simply enjoy the taste of stupidity in a creature who chose the gutters over his throne?

The thought that the ruler of the city’s underworld refers a disgraced, wandering ghost over her is a humiliation deeper than any bomb blast.

It means she’s lacking, and Louise will not accept it.

A soft, hesitant knock sounds at the double doors of her bedroom.

Louise stiffens. She pulls her shoulders back, her spine instantly snapping into a rigid line. In a fraction of a second, the manic rage disappears behind a mask of aristocratic composure.

Her face becomes a smooth, unreadable sheet of marble.

"Enter," she commands, her voice smooth and devoid of the storm raging inside her.

The heavy mahogany door creaks open. A young house servant steps into the room, his eyes fixed firmly on the floor, his entire body trembling so violently that the silver tray in his hands rattles rhythmically.

He takes three cautious steps, carefully avoiding the shattered glass and ruined lilies near the vanity.

"Forgive the intrusion, Lady Louise," the servant murmurs, his voice barely audible. "A... a courier arrived at the gates. They bypassed the primary security detail and left this specifically for you. They insisted it required your immediate, private attention."

Louise eyes the servant with cold disdain. "A courier bypassed security after a terrorist attack? The guards should be lined up and shot."

"They... they couldn’t trace the vehicle, My Lady. The cameras glitched during the drop-off," the servant stammers, extending the silver tray further.

Louise looks down. Resting on the polished silver is a thick, heavy envelope made of coarse, cream-colored parchment.

It’s completely unadorned by the usual gilded trim or the ornate family crests common among the elite. There is no return address. There is no formal title.

Written across the center in dark, fluid, elegant calligraphy is a single word—

Yaya.

Louise’s breath hitches, a small pause that the servant is far too terrified to notice. The name means nothing to the high-society registries. It doesn’t belong to the Vassilis, the Dubois, or the ruling families.

Slowly, her slender fingers reach out and lift the heavy parchment from the tray. She turns the envelope over.

Pressed into the center of the dark, crimson wax seal is a pristine, flawless stamp. It is not a family shield or a corporate logo.

It is the image of a serpent, its body coiled into a perfect, infinite loop, its jaws clamped tightly around its own tail.

The Ouroboros.

The symbol of eternal return, of a cycle that feeds on itself, destroying and rebuilding in absolute secrecy.

"Leave us," Louise whispers, her voice dropping into a tone so cold the servant bows hurriedly and scrambles backward out of the room, slamming the heavy doors behind him.

Louise stands alone in the wreckage of her vanity, the heavy letter held between her fingers.

The paper feels strangely warm against her cold skin.

The Masamune bomb may have ruined her initial board, but as she stares at the snake swallowing its tail, a slow, sharp, and predatory smile begins to return to her lips.

Adrien might have been born the rightful heir, but Louise is the one who will survive.

The game isn’t over. The players have just changed.

******

I won’t be able to keep my promise of two Chapters per day for this day because of health issues.

Please take care of your health so you don’t end up like me.

—TheLovePoet.