Chapter 78. Inheritance and Reckoning

“You are not the sum of what they designed. You’re the proof they couldn’t control the outcome,” Knox’s voice was low behind her.

“You didn’t sleep last night.”

Harper stood at the edge of her suite’s glass balcony, forehead tilted toward the bruised sky. The first light of dawn fractured across the Oman Ridge skyline—steel towers rising like mausoleums for secrets buried too deep.

“I don’t sleep,” she murmured, “when skeletons in the vault start waking.”

Her voice barely stirred the air. It wasn’t metaphor. It was logistics.

Knox stepped closer, his hand brushing the small of her back—a ghost of touch, permission rather than possession.

“Your mother called it a weapon,” he said.

Harper turned, expression carved from stone—but her eyes flickered open at the seams. “She didn’t just call it that,” she whispered. “She made me one.”

No denial.

No drama.

Just truth.

They said nothing more as the elevator dropped—past the e