Mason
The image on the monitor is crystal clear. Forty two inches of high definition deceit. I rewind the security feed for the third time. Her, ‘Anastasia’, looking down at her hands, a single tear tracing a path down her cheek. The performance is exquisite. The tremor in her voice, the feigned vulnerability. A masterpiece of manipulation.
My office is silent, a sterile space of glass, chrome, and black leather. It overlooks the city from the opposite side of the tower, a world away from the mahogany and old money of the boardroom. I prefer it this way. Fewer ghosts.
The only sound is the low hum of the server rack in the wall and the soft click of my mouse. Click. Rewind. Play.
“I’m sorry if my timing is inconvenient for you, Caleb.”
Her voice fills the quiet room. Even filtered through the monitor’s speakers, it has a strange quality. A layer of practiced softness over something hard as diamond. Caleb bought it. The old guard on the board bought it. They saw a lost little girl.
I see a professional.
My thumb traces the rim of my empty coffee cup. I know she is an imposter. The knowledge is not a suspicion. It is a cold, hard fact resting in my gut like a shard of ice. A fact I alone possess.
My mind drifts back two years. The scent of rain soaked earth and pine. The incessant buzz of insects in the humid air of the Cascade mountains. I found her. The real Anastasia Sterling. She was at the bottom of a ravine, tangled in the undergrowth, her body broken by the fall. A stupid, reckless hike in a coming storm. A selfish pursuit of a thrill that ended, as all her pursuits did, in disaster.
I stood there in the rain, her grandfather’s last words echoing in my head. ‘Protect my legacy, Mason. Protect the company.’
Anastasia wasn’t the legacy. She was a liability. A spoiled, unstable girl who cared more for headlines than shareholder reports. Her death, made public, would have triggered a feeding frenzy. Robert and Caleb Vance would have used the succession crisis to tear the company apart, selling it for scrap to the highest bidder. They had been waiting for years.
So I made a choice. I called my head of security, a man whose loyalty is to me, not the name on the building. We made it look like she simply vanished. Disappeared on one of her many impulsive trips. We planted a trail that went cold in Europe, paid off the right people, and let the mystery fade into a sad family tragedy.
For two years, the ghost of Anastasia Sterling has been a useful tool. A placeholder that kept the Vances at bay. I have been fighting them alone, a silent war in boardrooms and back channels, holding the line for a legacy her own blood would happily destroy.
And now this. Another ghost. A better one.
I fast forward the feed to the moment she spoke about OmniCore. I lean closer to the screen, watching her eyes. There is no confusion there. No lucky guess from a tech magazine.
“You could run their algorithms as a closed loop on a secure cloud server, a virtual sandbox.”
It was a brilliant gambit. Perfectly timed. Utterly humiliating for Caleb. It wasn’t just the content of her suggestion, but the delivery. The feigned shyness, the quiet confidence. She didn’t just offer a solution. She established a new persona in a single move. Not just the lost heiress, but a misunderstood, underestimated savant.
My desk phone buzzes, a soft, insistent tone. I glance at the caller ID. David Chen. My head of security.
“Talk to me,” I say, my eyes still on the frozen image of her face on the screen.
“She’s in the penthouse. Hasn’t left. Made one call from a burner phone, untraceable. Lasted four minutes. No other activity.”
A burner phone. Of course. A lost girl with amnesia who knows about encrypted communication. The fascination I feel is a dangerous, unfamiliar thing. It’s like watching a leopard wander into a sheep pen. I am not worried for the sheep. I am intrigued by the leopard.
“The background check we ran on the Oregon commune?” I ask.
“Ironclad,” David replies. “Forged records are perfect. Paid witnesses are well rehearsed. It’s a work of art. Whoever built this legend for her is as good as you are.”
That is high praise. And deeply unsettling.
“Keep the surveillance active,” I say. “Visual and audio in the penthouse. Non invasive for now. I want to know who she talks to, what she eats for breakfast, and what she reads before she goes to sleep. I want to know everything.”
“Understood. What’s the objective, Mason? Are we exposing her?”
I watch the woman on the screen. The way she met Caleb’s glare with that carefully crafted vulnerability. The flicker of steel I saw in her eyes when she thought no one was looking. The way her gaze met mine at the end of the meeting, a silent acknowledgment that we were not what we seemed. She wasn’t looking at a COO. She was looking at a threat. At a player.
Caleb is a blunt instrument. His father, Robert, is a cancer, slowly poisoning the company from within. I have been fighting them with spreadsheets and corporate law. It’s like trying to kill a dragon with a letter opener.
This woman, this brilliant imposter, she is not a letter opener. She is a sword.
“No, David,” I say, a decision solidifying in my mind. “We’re not exposing her. Not yet.”
“What are we doing?”
“We’re watching the show.”
I end the call and lean back in my chair, steepling my fingers. The real Anastasia Sterling would have been Caleb’s puppet within a week. She would have been manipulated, flattered, and controlled until the Vances had everything they wanted.
This woman is no one’s puppet. She arrived with a plan. She has a target. And that target, I am willing to bet a fifty million dollar acquisition, is Caleb Vance.
She thinks I am an obstacle. Another piece of the old guard she has to manage or deceive. She has no idea that I am the only person in this building who knows her secret. She has no idea that her greatest threat could be her most powerful ally.
For two years, I have been playing defense, holding the company together with secrecy and sheer force of will. It has been exhausting. It has been a lonely, thankless war.
But now, a new piece is on the board. A wild card. A ghost with an agenda. She is audacious. She is skilled. She is utterly, dangerously compelling.
I am not threatened by her. I am not angry that she is defiling the Sterling name. The real Anastasia did a fine job of that herself.
No, what I feel is a cold, sharp thrill. The kind a grandmaster feels when a novice makes a move so unexpected, so brilliant, it changes the entire game.
She wants to take down Caleb Vance. She wants to play the part of Anastasia Sterling, the returned heiress. I will let her. I will watch her every move, analyze her every word. I will give her just enough rope to see what she does with it.
Because if she can shatter Caleb’s arrogance, if she can disrupt the balance of power that has been slowly strangling this company, then she might be more valuable as an imposter than the real Anastasia ever was alive.
Let them think a ghost has come home to claim her inheritance. A lost little girl in a five thousand dollar dress.
I know what she is. She is a weapon. And she is pointed directly at my enemies. It’s time to see what she can do.
I turn off the monitor, plunging the office into the cool twilight. The game has begun. And for the first time in a long time, I am not entirely sure how it will end.
