There were no tears.
No hysterics.
Just a dead, chilling calm inside me, with a single flame of revenge flickering to life.
In the car, I pulled out my phone and dialed a number.
On the other end was Elora Wade, my father's most capable lead investigative journalist.
A woman known in certain circles for being able to "dig up secrets from the dead".
"Elora. It's me, Claudia," I said, my voice unnervingly steady. I want everything on Dylan's stand-in. His background, his family, every single transaction record between him and Dylan. The more detailed, the better."
Elora paused for a few seconds. "Miss, what do you mean by look-alike stand-in?"
I forced a smirk, my tone flat. "Dylan is a narcissistic control freak. He would never tolerate a sloppy imitation. To make sure that beggar could play his part perfectly, Dylan wrote a manual himself. Dozens of pages long.
It detailed everything. Even the private, intimate details of how he thought I should be handled.
The digital copy is in my cloud drive."
Elora's voice took on a new gravity. "Understood, Miss. You'll have everything you need within three days."
I interrupted her. "No, I need you to do one more thing. Inform my father that it's time to act. Start with the smaller stuff. The tax evasion at his company. The intern exploitation scandals. I want him to watch, helpless, as the empire he's so proud of is slowly eaten away from the inside, like termites gnawing at the foundations."
By the time I finished, the car had arrived at the villa, where I'd shared with Dylan.
I didn't return to the bedroom filled with humiliating memories.
Instead, I walked straight to the very back of the house, to a room that had been sealed shut for eight full years.
It was my dance studio.
Eight years had passed since I last set foot in here.
Inside, all the mirrors were covered with thick white cloths.
I walked over and gestured for the cloths to be pulled away, one by one.
The mirrors reflected a stranger.
Her face was pale, her figure frail.
I leaned against the cold bar, slowly lifting my right leg.
At the ankle, there was a grotesque scar, ugly and painful.
I had once felt inferior because of this scar, a constant reminder that I was a cripple.
A cripple that could never stand on stage again.
But now, looking at the wounded version of myself in the mirror, I felt an unprecedented sense of calm.
Dylan destroyed my dance career and my dreams.
But he probably never imagined that he also built for me a larger stage with his own hands.
A stage centered around revenge, with the entire Larson family as its backdrop.
And now, the show was about to begin.
