Chapter 7 - The Encrypted Ledger
Damian took the ruggedized black tablet from his chief of security, his dark eyes scanning the glowing screen as the amber light of the burning mansion flickered across his face.
“What is it?” I asked, holding Leah tightly as a sympathetic female medic handed us both sterile oxygen masks to clear our lungs of the smoke.
“Julian wasn't acting alone,” Damian said, his voice dropping into a register so chillingly quiet that the security chief instinctively took a step back. He tapped the screen, bringing up a complex web of corporate wire transfers and offshore accounts. “He had a silent partner on the executive board—someone who funded the shell companies that falsified your hospital records two years ago, Clara.”
My breath hitched behind the plastic oxygen mask. “Who?”
“My uncle,” Damian snarled, his jaw clenching so hard a muscle twitched violently. “Victor Caruso.”
The name dropped like a lead weight into the courtyard. Everyone on the security detail knew what Victor represented: the old guard of the syndicate, a man who had been officially “retired” to a private estate in Switzerland for a decade, but who evidently still pulled strings from the shadows to wrest control of the family empire away from Damian.
“Victor thought that by orchestrating the hospital swap, he could force Julian to destabilize my household from within,” Damian continued, his fingers curling into a tight fist around the edges of the tablet. “He wanted an heir under his thumb, and he wanted me isolated and vulnerable when the federal indictments dropped.”
“He used my baby as a pawn,” I whispered, a cold wave of fury rising up from the depths of my chest, completely replacing the terror I had felt just moments before. I wasn't just a waitress anymore. I was a mother whose child had been stolen by monsters who thought money could buy human lives.
Damian knelt down beside the stretcher, his strong hand reaching out to gently touch my knee. The soot on his skin contrasted sharply with the profound tenderness in his dark eyes.
“They thought we were broken, Clara,” Damian said softly, his voice steady and resolute. “They thought they could rewrite our history and dispose of us when we became inconvenient.”
He stood up, looking at his chief of security with a look of absolute, lethal clarity.
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“Get the Gulfstream prepped at the private airstrip. We’re not waiting for Victor to make his next move,” Damian ordered sharply. “We’re going to Zurich.”
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