CHAPTER 177: THE SMALL ALLIANCE

The first step of Operation: Save the Queen Bee was the most difficult, and the most awkward. They had to make contact with the enemy.

They found her the next day, in the one place they knew she would be. The library of her prestigious, private college, a grand, cathedral-like space that smelled of old money and leather-bound books.

They had driven the two hours to her campus, the five of them crammed into Nina’s sister’s long-suffering sedan. Ren had declined to join them. "My presence would be... counter-productive," he had said. "This is a mission of diplomacy, not intimidation. That is your area of expertise, not mine."

They walked into the library, a small, out-of-place island of public university students in a sea of wealthy, well-dressed co-eds. They found Jessica at a large, oak table in the center of the main reading room, a stack of thick, intimidating-looking law books in front of her.

She was not reading. She was just staring at the page, her expression a mixture of fear, and desperation, and a profound, bone-deep exhaustion.

She looked up as they approached, her eyes widening in a look of pure, unadulterated shock. "What... what are you doing here?" she stammered, her voice a low, panicked whisper.

"We need to talk," Nina said, her own voice a quiet, no-nonsense command.

"I have nothing to say to you," Jessica hissed, her fear quickly turning to her more familiar, defensive anger. "Get out of here before I call security."

"You don’t want to do that," Kofi said, his own voice calm and even. "We know about your father. We know about Silas. And we know that you are in a lot of trouble."

The color drained from Jessica’s face. The anger was gone, replaced by a raw, naked terror. She looked around the quiet, opulent library, at the other students who were now starting to glance in their direction.

"Not here," she whispered, her voice a choked, broken sound.

She stood up, her movements jerky and uncoordinated, and led them out of the library, to a small, secluded courtyard in the center of the campus.

They stood in a tense, awkward circle, the five of them and their former tormentor.

"How do you know?" Jessica asked, her arms wrapped around herself, a desperate, cornered look in her eyes.

"It doesn’t matter how we know," Nina said. "What matters is what we are going to do about it."

"There’s nothing to do," Jessica said, a bitter, humorless laugh escaping her lips. "It’s over. My father... he made a deal. I have a job to do. And when it’s done..." She trailed off, a look of pure, abject fear on her face.

"What is the job?" Kofi asked gently.

Jessica just shook her head. "I can’t tell you. If he finds out I talked to you..."

"He is going to dispose of you anyway," Kofi said, his voice a blunt, simple statement of fact. "Your only chance is to work with us."

"Work with you?" she asked, her voice a mixture of disbelief and a deep, ingrained revulsion. "After everything? Why would you help me?"

"Because," Ruby said, her quiet voice full of a simple, unwavering compassion, "no one deserves what is happening to you. Not even you."

Jessica just stared at her, her carefully constructed walls of anger and arrogance beginning to crumble.

"We have a plan," Nina said, her voice all business. "A way to get you out of this. But we need you to trust us. We need you to tell us everything."

Jessica was quiet for a long, agonizing moment. She looked at each of them in turn. At Ruby’s gentle, compassionate face. At Jake’s nerdy, anxious-to-help expression. At Thea, a quiet, observant ghost who was looking at her not with hatred, but with a strange, profound, and deeply unsettling understanding.

She looked at Nina, her old friend, her oldest rival, her fiercest enemy.

And she looked at Kofi, the quiet, unassuming boy who had somehow become the center of this strange, powerful, and ridiculously loyal little family.

The family she had tried, and failed, to destroy.

She took a long, shuddering breath, a single, hot tear rolling down her cheek. "Okay," she whispered, the word a quiet, desperate act of surrender. "Okay. I’ll tell you."

And so she did. She told them everything. She told them about her father’s criminal empire, about the years of secrets and lies. She told them about Silas, the polite, smiling monster who had been a fixture in her life for as long as she could remember.

And she told them about her "job."

Her father and Silas needed a fall guy. A plausible, public scapegoat to take the fall for their entire operation, to create a final, definitive end to the problem that Kofi’s father had uncovered.

And they had chosen the perfect candidate. A man with a known gambling problem, a history of shady business dealings, and a deep, personal connection to the one person who had started this whole mess.

They were going to frame Yuna’s father.

The plan was simple, and it was brutal. Jessica’s job was to plant a series of fabricated documents in Yuna’s father’s new, quiet, and completely unsecured apartment on the other side of the country. Documents that would implicate him as the secret, mastermind behind the entire money-laundering operation.

"They have it all planned," Jessica whispered, her voice a raw, broken sound. "The documents. The anonymous tip to the police. He’ll be arrested. He’ll go to prison for the rest of his life. And my father... he’ll be a hero. The respectable businessman who helped bring a dangerous criminal to justice."

"And Silas?" Kofi asked.

"He just... disappears," Jessica said. "He gets a new identity, a new life, paid for by my father. And I..."

"You become the star witness," Nina finished, her own voice a low, furious growl. "The brave daughter who turned against her own father’s corrupt business partner."

It was a perfect, diabolical plan. It did not just solve their problem. It turned their problem into a public relations victory.

"When?" Kofi asked, his voice a tight, urgent command.

"Next week," Jessica whispered. "I’m supposed to fly out on Thursday."

The countdown clock had started again. They had less than a week to stop a man from being framed, to save a girl from being disposed of, and to take down a criminal empire that was run by one of the most powerful men in the state.

"Okay," Nina said, her voice a calm, steady anchor in their sea of chaos. "We have the intelligence. Now we need a new plan. A better one."

She looked around at her strange, beautiful, and completely out-of-their-depth little army.

And for the first time, she looked at Jessica, not as an enemy, not as a victim, but as a new, reluctant, and incredibly valuable, asset.

"Welcome to the revolution, Jessica," Nina said, a grim, determined smile on her face. "You are going to hate it here."