The invitation to Eleanor Blackwood's roundtable still sat in Ava's inbox, unread but blinking at her like a dare.
She hadn't answered it.
Not because she wasn't going.
Because she didn't know what version of herself would walk through that door if she did.
She'd spent the last two days re-reading every archived article she could find about the Sinclair collapse, Lucien Maddox, and the quiet disappearance of her father's public voice in his final year. And somehow, the deeper she dug, the more sanitized the past seemed. As if someone had gone in and wiped the blood from the walls.
What disturbed her more was how few people had ever mentioned Damien Blackwood in those final months—not with judgment, not with blame. Just... silence.
Too quiet, she thought. Like something had been buried while the world was looking elsewhere.
Her phone buzzed against the desk. Julian.
"Upstairs. Wanted to run something by you."
She met him in Easton's media lab, where he was pacing with a stack of mockups and a furrow between his brows.
"I'm thinking of pulling this campaign," he said without preamble. "It's not ready."
Ava looked at the visuals—strong, but not Julian strong. His standards were higher than this. And that was when it hit her.
"You're distracted," she said.
He hesitated.
Then shrugged. "A little. This thing with Maddox's daughter is crawling into every conversation now. And I'm hearing things—quiet ones—about your father's old international accounts being flagged again."
She narrowed her eyes. "Flagged how?"
"Unexplained transfers. Weird timing. Right before the collapse."
Ava folded her arms. "And you just happened to find this now?"
Julian didn't look at her. "I wasn't hiding it. I just… wanted to be sure before I brought it to you."
That stung.
Because now it was twice in one week someone she trusted had decided she wasn't ready for a truth.
"You don't get to decide what I'm ready for," she said quietly.
Julian met her eyes, and for a moment, she saw something crack. Not guilt. Not defiance. Just... pain.
"I didn't mean it like that."
"I know," she said. "That's the problem."
He left a minute later, promising to email the flagged data.
She didn't stop him.
She was too busy thinking about the fact that everyone around her—Damien, Lucien, Eleanor, and now Julian—held fragments of the story. And none of them trusted her enough to hand it over without filtering it first.
The following evening, she didn't go home.
Instead, she found herself in a forgotten corner of the East River, staring at the flickering reflection of the skyline and remembering how her father used to call New York "the city that plays chess in mirrors."
Everyone was pretending.
Everyone was positioning.
And somewhere between memory and manipulation, Ava had lost her anchor.
She didn't want revenge anymore.
She wanted clarity.
She wanted to know why a man like Lucien Maddox—who once helped build her father's empire—vanished from the story.
Why his daughter was now obsessed with truth.
Why Eleanor had funded the Sinclair trust quietly, without ever reaching out.
And why Damien Blackwood—whose name haunted her grief—looked like a man carrying guilt instead of pride.
Her phone buzzed again.
Damien: "If you want answers, don't go through the archives. Come to the old studio. Tomorrow. 7PM."
Ava stared at the message.
The studio.
Her father's favorite building.
The one they sold off weeks before the company folded.
Ava's chest tightened.
He knew.
Somehow, Damien knew something about that place—and what happened behind those closed doors.
She didn't respond.
But for the first time since this began, she knew where she had to go next.
Not backward. Not down memory lane.
But toward the one man she might finally be ready to face without rage.
Without pretense.
Just with questions she was tired of asking in the dark.