It was Sunday morning at the Sinclair Estate.
Aria sat on the edge of the rumpled bed, catching her reflection in the mirror. Her hair was a chaotic, rose-gold halo of bedhead, her face bare and glowing from a weekend of... vigorous activity. She looked thoroughly ravished.
She pulled out her phone, angling it until the morning sun hit her cheekbones just right. She shifted slightly, making sure the scattered pillows and the messy sheets were clearly visible in the background—a subtle flex for the observant.
Click.
No filters. Just raw, morning-after energy.
She typed out the caption: "Survived the weekend in the haunted castle. Barely. Trading ghosts for cameras tomorrow. Can’t wait to be back on set where the drama is scripted. #Freedom #SetLife #MorningFace"
She hit post.
The notifications exploded instantly.
@QueenAriaStan: "MA’AM??? THE HAIR??? WHO DID THAT???"
@DamienSinclairsLeftHand: "That glow is not from skincare. That is the glow of a woman who was kept awake."
@AntiBellaAssociation: "Imagine looking this good without a filter. Bella could never."
@RomanceReader_99: "The bed looks destroyed in the background. I am looking respectfully."
Aria laughed softly, scrolling through the flood of adoration. It was a nice ego boost before reality set in. She swiped the app closed, the smile fading as she looked around the vast, imposing room. The fun was over.
"I really need to look at the script changes," she muttered to herself, swiping away a notification from the studio. She hadn’t glanced at the email they sent on Friday; the weekend had been... otherwise occupied. "Later. On the way back."
She stood up and finished packing. She zipped her Louis Vuitton weekender bag shut with a decisive snap and tossed it onto the floor next to the door. She was ready. If she could have teleported herself back to the city right now, she would have.
She checked the time on her phone. 11:00 AM.
Damien was gone. He had left a few hours ago for a video conference in the library with international clients who apparently didn’t care that it was Sunday. He had kissed her awake, muttered something about "sharks in different time zones," and left her alone in the East Wing sanctuary.
Aria flopped into the oversized velvet armchair. She was wearing nothing but a pair of simple cotton panties and one of Damien’s white dress shirts. It swallowed her frame, the cuffs hanging past her fingertips, smelling of cedar and mint. It was comfortable.
She unlocked her phone and opened Chrome, immediately switching to Incognito mode. Her thumb hovered over the search bar. The memory of the article she had read in the Solarium—the one Diana and the hens had interrupted—was itching at the back of her brain.
The Fall of the House of Orpheus.
She typed in the keywords she remembered: French Crime Syndicate, Marseille Ports, Vipers.
She hit search.
The loading bar spun for a second.
"404 Not Found."
Aria frowned. She refreshed the page.
"The page you are looking for has been removed."
"That’s impossible," she whispered. She had read it less than twenty-four hours ago. It was a blog post on a crime watchdog site. Things on the internet didn’t just disappear.
She went to her history. The link was there. She clicked it.
"Error: Server connection timed out."
A cold feeling settled in her stomach. Someone had scrubbed it. In the last few hours, while she was busy playing dress-up, someone had methodically erased that specific trail.
She tried a different angle.
Eleanor Vale Vipers.
Nothing. Just articles about her mother’s charity work from 2005 and her obituary.
Lydia Laurent Paris Vipers connection.
Nothing. Just society pages praising her fashion sense and the recent headlines about the IRS investigation.
"Come on," Aria muttered, typing furiously. "You can’t scrub everything."
She thought back to the text of the article. It had mentioned a specific family. A name that sounded like a myth.
The Orpheus Family.
She typed it in. Orpheus French Crime Family.
The search results populated. But it was all noise. Greek mythology. An opera house in Paris. A tech startup in Silicon Valley.
She scrolled. Page one. Page two. Page three.
Nothing about a crime syndicate. Nothing about a war in Marseille. It was as if the "House of Orpheus" had never existed.
Aria set the phone down on her lap. Her hands were trembling slightly.
This wasn’t just a glitch. This was a firewall. The Vipers—or whoever was pulling the strings—had a digital reach that terrified her. If they could erase a crime family from Google, what else could they erase? Could they erase a murder? A person?
"Who are you?" she whispered to the empty room. "And why are you so afraid of being named?"
She picked up the phone again, determined to try a different search engine, maybe the dark web if she could figure out how to access it on an iPhone.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
The sound was sharp and polite in the quiet room.
Aria jumped, her phone clattering to the floor. Her heart hammered against her ribs.
She stared at the door.
"Damien?" she called out.
No answer.
Maybe it was Alfred with tea? Or a maid to collect the bags?
She stood up, checking that the shirt covered her thighs. It hung to her mid-thigh, modest enough for a brief interaction with staff. She walked to the door and unlocked it.
She pulled it open.
It wasn’t Damien. It wasn’t Alfred.
It was Lucas.
He stood in the hallway, looking surprisingly fresh.
He was dressed in casual luxury—a crisp white linen shirt with the top buttons undone, tailored navy shorts, and expensive loafers. His hair was perfectly styled, swept back from his forehead.
He held a thick stack of papers in one hand.
When he saw her, his face lit up with the blinding, charming "Golden Boy" smile that had once made her heart flutter in her past life.
"Morning, Aria," Lucas said brightly, as if they were old friends meeting for brunch. "I hope I didn’t wake you."