Chapter 12 - The Confession of a Broken Dynasty
The confession hung in the cold air of the glass penthouse, heavy with a decade of suppressed hatred and twisted vengeance.
I didn't flinch. I didn't raise my voice. I simply looked at the man sitting across from me—a man consumed entirely by his own self-pity and thirst for destruction.
"Ten years ago," I said, my voice cutting cleanly through the silence.
"Your father didn't lose his shipping company to the Moretti syndicate, Julian. He lost it to his own reckless gambling debts and multi-million-dollar cocaine habits."
Julian’s face twisted in rage. "You're lying! Your enforcers forced him out!"
"My enforcers simply bought his defaulted bank notes legally after three separate Wall Street banks refused to touch him," I countered, taking two slow steps closer to the desk.
"I offered him a generous buyout to save your family name from public bankruptcy. He spat in my face, burned his own financial ledgers, and fled the country."
"You blame the Moretti name for a tragedy your father wrote with his own hands."
Julian sprang up from his executive chair, his hands slamming flat against the glass desk as he glared at me with pure, unadulterated venom.
"You ruined my father! You reduced us to nothing!" Julian screamed.
"And I swore an oath that I would tear down your pristine Moretti dynasty brick by brick—starting with the very children you hold so dear!"
"That is why you targeted Theo, Miles, and Nora," I whispered, the rage inside me turning ice-cold and methodical.
"That is why you had Thomas plant an acoustic disruptor in their nursery—to break them psychologically before you broke me."
"Yes!" Julian laughed maniacally, throwing his hands up in the air.
"And it would have worked! If that stupid little housekeeper's daughter hadn't walked into the nursery and ruined my master plan!"
"Sophie," I said quietly.
"Remember that name, Julian. Because a four-year-old girl with a button-eyed doll had more courage, more loyalty, and more intelligence than an international master saboteur."
Julian's manic expression faltered. He reached down quickly toward the top drawer of his executive desk, his fingers darting toward a concealed heavy-caliber automatic pistol hidden beneath the paperwork.
"You won't leave this penthouse alive, Adrien," Julian snarled, yanking the drawer open.
Before his hand could even close around the grip of the weapon, I drew my Sig Sauer with blinding speed.
Crack.
May you like
A single suppressed round punched straight through the center of the glass desktop, shattering the tempered glass and driving directly into the soft tissue of Julian’s right shoulder.
Julian let out a sharp, agonized cry, stumbling backward and crashing hard against the floor-to-ceiling glass window behind his desk, clutching his bleeding shoulder.
