---- Chapter 5 Althea Roberts POV: The first two months were a blur of encrypted video calls, secure data transfers, and a gnawing, ever-present pain that had little to do with my slowly healing ribs. | worked from a sterile, high-end recovery suite that Essex had arranged, a place that felt more like a luxury prison than a hospital. Jay Parrish was my eyes and ears inside Pierce Industries. Every night, he would send a data dump: progress reports, internal memos, snippets of code. It was like watching a train wreck in slow motion. Brittany, drunk on her newfound power, was pushing the tech team to accelerate the rollout of "Project Ascension." She was promising impossible results to investors, buoyed by Crawford's blind ambition and our father's fawning praise. They were building a cathedral on a sinkhole. Meanwhile, Essex and | were building an ark in a basement. We worked with a raw, desperate synergy. He was quiet, observant, and saw the implications of my technology in ways | hadn' t even considered. He wasn' t just giving me infrastructure; he was augmenting my vision, making it stronger, faster, more lethal. We named our new venture "Nyx," after the Greek goddess of ---- the night. It was fitting. We operated entirely in the shadows. "The initial feedback from the test clients is... overwhelming," Essex said during one of our late-night calls. His face, usually a mask of calm neutrality, was illuminated by the glow of his monitor, and | could see a flicker of genuine excitement in his eyes. We had deployed a beta version of our Al, now integrated with his Phoenix system, to three of his private defense contractors. "They're calling it a 'crystal ball'," | said, reading from a report on my own screen. "One of them used it to predict a currency fluctuation in a volatile region and hedged their bets. Saved them eighty million dollars in a single afternoon." "It's more than | hoped for," he admitted, a rare confession. "You've created something extraordinary, Althea." "We've created it," | corrected him. His quiet confidence was a balm on my raw nerves. With Crawford, every success was a competition. With Essex, it was a shared victory. There was no ego, no posturing. Just a mutual, laser-like focus on the goal. It was a partnership. A real one. And the feeling was so foreign, so deeply unfamiliar, that it almost frightened me. The media, meanwhile, was having a field day with Brittany and Crawford. They were the new golden couple, gracing magazine covers, their love story and business acumen ---- lauded in fawning articles. One headline made me want to throw my tablet against the wall: 'The Power of True Partnership: How Brittany Huber and Crawford Pierce are Redefining an Empire." True partnership. The irony was a physical ache in my chest. Then, the first crack appeared. Jay sent me an urgent, one- word message: Cascade." | pulled up the feed he had established, a backdoor into Pierce Industries' network. The data coming out of Project Ascension was starting to look... strange. Supply chain predictions were off by a few decimal points. Consumer demand forecasts were fluctuating wildly. They were small errors, statistical noise to an untrained eye. But | knew what | was looking at. The Al was beginning to hallucinate. Two weeks later, the crack became a chasm. A massive shipment of microchips, rerouted by Ascension to a port in Antwerp based on a faulty prediction of a dockworker strike in Rotterdam, sat on the tarmac. The strike never happened. The chips were for Pierce's electronics division's flagship product. The delay would cost them the entire holiday quarter. The stock, which had been soaring, took a ten-percent nosedive. Crawford and Brittany held an emergency press conference. Brittany, radiant in a power-red dress, blamed "unforeseen geopolitical factors" and "market volatility." Crawford stood beside her, his jaw tight, promising a full review. ---- They were patching the cracks with scotch tape. The final act of sabotage, however, came from a place | never expected. My father. Hale called me for the first time since I'd left the hospital. "Althea," he said, his voice strained. "We need to talk." "| don't think we have anything to talk about," | said, my voice cold. "Don't take that tone with me. I'm still your father. Look, Brittany is under a lot of pressure. The Antwerp incident... it's a mess. She mentioned you kept detailed private journals, research notes for Chimera. She thinks the answer to the system's instability might be in there." | froze, my blood turning to ice. My journals. They weren't just research. They were my thoughts, my theories, my uncensored frustrations. And they contained detailed, hypothetical scenarios about how the Al could be weaponized, how it could be used to manipulate markets, not just predict them. In the wrong hands, those notes were a recipe for disaster. "Where are these journals?" | asked, my voice dangerously quiet. "In my safe at the main house," he said. "Brittany needs them, Althea. For the good of the family. For the good of the company." "You want me to just hand over the keys to the kingdom so ---- she can burn it down faster?" | shot back, my control snapping. "She is your sister!" he thundered. "And she is trying her best! A little compassion wouldn't kill you. This is your chance to come back into the fold, to show some loyalty." Loyalty. The word was a joke. "I'll think about it," | lied, and hung up. | immediately called Essex. "They're going for my journals. My father has them. If Brittany gets her hands on those, she won't just break the company. She'll commit fraud on a scale that will make Antwerp look like a rounding error." "Where are they?" he asked, his voice already shifting into tactical mode. "My childhood home. The one my mother left me. Hale kicked me out and moved in after she died. He changed the locks, but he never upgraded the security system. It's old. Analog." "| have a team that specializes in analog," he said. "Give me the address." This was it. The point of no return. Up until now, we had been passive observers, watching them self-destruct. This was an active move. This was a declaration of war. "Essex," | said, my heart pounding. "This is risky." "Althea," he replied, his voice a low, steady anchor in the storm of my panic. "Everything worth doing is risky. Let them have ---- their magazine covers. We're building an empire. It's time we started acting like it." He was right. | gave him the address. For the first time since the accident, | didn't feel like a victim. | felt like a queen moving a key piece across the chessboard. And it was their move. Title: A Princess? No! I'm the Female General! In "A Princess? No! I'm the Female General!" by CrushReel, Adela Taylor, a noble family's daughter, disguises herself as her brother to secure their Duke title by joining the army. Despite facing obstacles, she achieves remarkable success. However, upon her triumphant return, her brother betrays her, setting off a chain of events that will test her resolve and reveal hidden truths. This captivating novel delves into themes of secrets, reincarnation, revenge, murder, and drama. Adela's journey from deception to betrayal is filled with intrigue and suspense as she navigates through a world where power dynamics and family loyalties collide. What sets this story apart is its strong female lead who defies expectations and challenges societal norms in a quest for justice and redemption. Experience the riveting tale of Adela Taylor online at CrushReel and witness the transformation of a princess into a formidable female general.