Chapter 3 - The Interrogation & The Trap
By 2:00 AM, the top floor of the private Blackwood Medical Wing was completely silent save for the rhythmic beep of Ethan’s heart monitor.
The baby was tucked under a small, soft blanket, his small left arm immobilized in a pristine white cast. His color was finally returning, the faint pink hue coming back to his cheeks as the residual sedatives cleared his liver.
I sat in the armchair right beside his crib, holding his uninjured hand, refusing to sleep.
The door opened silently. Victor walked in. He had removed his suit jacket, rolling the sleeves of his crisp white shirt up to his forearms, revealing the dark, intricate tattoos that stretched up his wrists—symbols of the Blackwood lineage and the blood debts he had collected over a decade of rule.
He carried two fresh cups of black coffee, setting one on the table beside my chair.
“He hasn’t stirred,” I said softly, keeping my voice low so as not to wake the child. “The doctor said the X-rays show a greenstick fracture in his radius. It will heal completely in six weeks, but… the psychological trauma of the sedatives will take time to assess.”
Victor stood over the crib, gazing down at his son. Slowly, he reached down with one massive, calloused finger. Baby Ethan’s small hand instinctively curled around his father’s finger, holding on with surprising strength.
A flicker of raw, unshielded pain crossed Victor’s face before he locked it back behind his impenetrable steel mask.
“She thought I was blind,” Victor murmured. “She thought because I spent weeks in Europe consolidating shipping lines, I was oblivious to what was happening under my own roof.”
“She was careful, Victor,” I offered gently. “She only gave him the drops when you were out of the country. She made sure the servants were rotated out every three weeks so no one noticed a pattern. She threatened the kitchen staff with termination if they questioned her orders.”
“That excuses them,” Victor said coldly, looking over at me. “It does not excuse me.”
He sat in the chair opposite mine, his long legs crossed, leaning forward with his hands clasped between his knees.
“Marcus secured the house,” Victor said. “Valerie is in the cellar. Her personal laptops, encrypted phones, and safe deposit keys have been retrieved. My tech team cleared her hard drives twenty minutes ago.”
I sat up straight. “What did they find?”
“She wasn't working alone,” Victor revealed, his eyes narrowing into slits of pure obsidian. “Valerie Thorne was a proxy. The money funding her Swiss accounts didn't come from her father’s dead assets. It came from inside my own board.”
My breath caught. “Inside the Blackwood Syndicate?”
“My uncle,” Victor said flatly. “Richard Blackwood.”
The name hit the room like a bomb. Richard Blackwood was Victor’s father’s younger brother—a man who held thirty percent of the syndicate’s legal holdings and controlled the real estate development arms in Manhattan. He had always presented himself as a quiet, retired elder statesman who deferred to Victor on all major security and operational decisions.
“Richard wanted Ethan gone,” Victor explained, his tone terrifyingly methodical. “If Ethan died under suspicious circumstances and I was ruined by the public fallout and internal grief, the family council would have forced me to step down or pass control to an older bloodline relative. Richard would have inherited the entire eastern corridor.”
“And Valerie?” I asked.
“Valerie was promised fifty million dollars and your head on a platter,” Victor said. “Richard knew about your past with her. He picked your resume off a blind placement board six months ago and instructed Valerie to approve your hiring. You were the perfect scapegoat, Clara. A girl with a past juvenile arson record, no living family, and no financial backing to hire defense attorneys.”
A cold shiver ran down my spine. They had built a box around me before I even knew I was in a trap. Every smile Valerie had given me in the hallway, every time she had handed me Ethan’s bottle with that sweet, false look of aristocratic concern—it was all designed to end with me in a maximum-security prison and an innocent child in a grave.
“What are you going to do?” I asked quietly.
Victor stood up. The air in the room seemed to contract around him, thick with an undeniable aura of absolute authority.
“Richard called a mandatory emergency meeting of the syndicate board for 9:00 AM tomorrow,” Victor said. “He believes I am still at the hospital, hysterical, broken, and dealing with a tragic domestic accident. He intends to push for a vote of confidence regarding my leadership based on my ‘inability to maintain security within my own residence.’”
Victor stepped close to my chair, leaning down until his dark eyes were level with mine.
“Tomorrow morning, Clara, you and Ethan are going to stay under heavy guard at my private compound in the Hamptons.”
“No,” I said firmly, standing up to face him.
Victor blinked, clearly unaccustomed to being contradicted by anyone, let alone an un-armed twenty-four-year-old nanny. “No?”
“I am not hiding in the Hamptons while you fight your uncle,” I said, my voice steady despite the adrenaline roaring through my blood. “Valerie Thorne tried to kill Ethan and ruin my life. Richard Blackwood paid for the poison. If you are going into that boardroom to destroy them, I am walking in right beside you.”
Victor stared at me for three long seconds. For the first time since I had met him, the ghost of a cold, approving smile touched the corner of his lips.
May you like
“You have iron in you, Clara,” he said softly.
“I have a debt to settle,” I corrected. “And so do you.”
