Found Obsession

Chapter 135: Betrayal IV

Rose woke up groggily, her body heavy with exhaustion, her spirit drained. The familiar weight beneath her pillow grounded her: one hand gripped the Spear of Destiny, the other the Lampstand, and buried even deeper beneath her was her laptop. She sighed, her marks burning against her skin, a fiery reminder of the pact she carried, the curse she bore.

Her mood was foul, her mind consumed by the anger coursing through her veins. Elijah had likely left in the night, and for once, she hoped—prayed—that he and the others would heed her words and stay out of her way. She didn't want their help; she didn't trust it.

November 22, 2006 – 11:00 AM

The marks were the source of her simmering rage; she could feel it. The pain laced through her mind, feeding her anger like kindling to a fire. Her heart felt as if it had been torn apart and left to bleed, yet her fury stitched it back together with something colder, sharper.

Rose pulled out the holy artifacts from beneath her pillow, setting them aside as her eyes swept the tent. Her gaze fell on the laptop, and with trembling hands, she opened it.

This war had been about her family.

The thought hit her again like a sledgehammer. The devil's mark, she reminded herself bitterly. She couldn't trust anyone—not Jonathan, not Elijah, not even herself. The past eight months had been nothing but a circus of lies, a mockery of her beliefs.

Rose began typing furiously, hacking into government systems with a precision that would terrify even the most seasoned cybersecurity experts. Federal laws? Irrelevant. Consequences? She didn't care. Her eyes darted across streams of classified information, unveiling secrets buried in the depths of the war machine.

She dug deeper, searching for the supposed allies in this war. Allies. The word tasted bitter on her tongue. Who were they? Who stood to gain from this bloodshed? Each discovery fueled her fury further. Attempts to trace her were met with viruses and shutdowns, her brilliance too much for them to counter.

When she finally felt her work was done, she slammed the laptop shut and placed it on the floor. Exhaustion took over again, and she crawled back into bed, hoping for a moment of peace.

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The arguments started not long after, sharp voices penetrating the fragile silence of her tent. They dragged her out of her sleep, her mood worsening by the second. She stood up, her hair cascading around her like a fiery halo. She was a picture of ethereal beauty, framed by the rumpled sheets of the bed.

To anyone who saw her, she would appear as if she had been plucked from a dream: a face too beautiful to hide pain, eyes too piercing to betray vulnerability. And yet, there she stood, her brilliance and rage intertwining into a force that demanded attention.

Her thoughts spiraled as she dressed, the sting of betrayal heavy on her mind. Was she someone to toy with? To deceive? Was it amusing to keep her in the dark? Her anger burned brighter, cutting through the haze of her emotions.

Today, they would see her for what she truly was. Not the naive girl who trusted too easily, but the woman who had been forged by betrayal, tempered by pain, and sharpened by the fire of her own intelligence.

If they thought they could continue to underestimate her, they were about to be proven very, very wrong.

She hated her failure—hated the bitter taste it left in her mouth. She hated herself for being outsmarted, for falling into her father's carefully laid plans. He had orchestrated it all, every piece of it, and she had walked straight into his trap, thinking she could outmaneuver him.

But deep down, she knew the truth. She had given him the tools.

Everything she had learned, every skill she had sharpened, every ounce of her brilliance—she had inherited it from him and her mother.