Chapter 8 - The Bloodline Ledger
The hydraulic hiss of the safe room door opening sounded like a breath of fresh air after a suffocating eternity.
Lily stepped out cautiously, Ethan still clutched tightly in her right arm. The study was a war zone. The scent of cordite, blood, and ozone hung thick in the air. Two bodies lay motionless on the Persian rug.
Victor stood by the desk. Serena was pinned to the floor, Dominic’s heavy boot planted firmly between her shoulder blades, her hands zip-tied behind her back.
Victor turned immediately toward Lily.
His eyes swept over her, cataloging every inch of her body with frantic intensity until his gaze caught the bloody tear in her sleeve. His jaw locked.
“You’re hit,” Victor said, crossing the room in three strides.
“It’s just glass,” Lily insisted, though her knees were beginning to shake from the adrenaline crash. “Ethan doesn't have a scratch. I swear, Victor, he’s untouched.”
Victor took Ethan from her arms, checking the boy himself with swift, trembling hands. Ethan clung to his father’s chest, babbling softly, exhausted from the terror. Victor pressed his lips to his son’s forehead, closing his eyes for three long seconds.
When he opened them, the darkness inside them had crystallized into pure obsidian.
He handed Ethan gently to a trusted guard standing at the door. “Take him to the secondary bunker. Post four men outside.”
“Yes, Boss.”
Once the door closed behind the child, Victor turned toward Serena.
Dominic pulled Serena up by her hair, forcing her onto her knees. Her face was cut from the shattered glass, her lips split, bleeding profusely. But her eyes still held the feral, desperate venom of a dying viper.
“You think you won, Victor?” Serena spat, blood flecking her teeth. “Look at your desk! Look at the safe!”
Victor turned his gaze to the wall behind his desk. The concealed wall safe had been blasted open with commercial breaching foam. Inside, several thick dossiers had been ripped open, documents scattered across the floor.
“Julian didn't come to rescue me,” Serena laughed, a high, broken sound. “He came for the Ledger. The Blackwood bloodline ledger. The real records of the syndicate’s offshore trusts.”
Victor didn't look at the scattered papers. He walked over to Serena, his steps slow, deliberate.
“The ledger is worthless,” Victor said calmly.
Serena sneered. “Worthless? It contains the identities of every covert account your father set up for Ethan! It has the signatures that prove Ethan’s birth was registered under a dual trust—one that gives complete ownership of the northern territory to whoever holds guardianship!”
Lily froze near the shattered window, her hand pressing against her bleeding arm. “Guardianship?”
Victor looked at Lily, then back down to Serena.
“Julian wanted Ethan dead,” Victor said, piecing together the final thread of the conspiracy. “Because if Ethan died while I was incapacitated or dead, you, as my legal fiancée, would inherit full guardianship of the estate. But if Ethan lived, you needed to legally adopt him to control the trust.”
“And you were never going to let me adopt him!” Serena screamed. “You kept him locked away with that dead bitch’s shadow! You were going to use me for my father’s docks and then push me aside!”
“I was going to give you a comfortable life,” Victor said coldly. “You chose to poison an infant.”
Victor bent down, picking up a single sheet of paper from the floor that had been torn from the ledger.
He didn't read it. He held it up before Serena’s eyes.
“Do you know what this page contains, Serena?” Victor asked.
Serena glared at it, breathing heavily.
“This is the secondary beneficiary clause,” Victor murmured. “Drafted two weeks ago, while you were screaming in my cellar.”
He turned the page so Lily could see it.
Lily’s breath caught in her throat. Her eyes scanned the legal script. In bold, irrevocable syndicate law, countersigned by the Commission’s top judges, Victor Blackwood had established a new legal guardianship for Ethan Alexander Blackwood in the event of his father’s death.
The name written on the line was not a Montigue. It was not a Blackwood capo.
It was Lily Vance.
“You... you named me?” Lily whispered, her voice trembling in pure disbelief. “Victor... I have nothing. I’m nobody.”
“You are the woman who bled for him twice,” Victor said, his eyes locking onto hers with a fierce, burning certainty. “You are the only person in this city who loves my son without asking for a percentage of his blood.”
Serena shrieked—a sound of pure, unadulterated madness. She lunged forward, trying to break free from Dominic’s grip. “She’s a peasant! She’s an orphan! You would give the Blackwood empire to a street whore?”
Victor didn't even look at Serena.
He drew his .45, turned his wrist, and fired a single shot into the floor half an inch from Serena’s kneecap. The ricochet tore through the carpet, sending concrete dust spraying into her face.
Serena fell silent instantly, choking on her own terror.
“Dominic,” Victor ordered, his voice dropping to a whisper that rattled the glass in the frames. “Julian Montigue is currently waiting at the private hangar at Midway Airport. He believes his strike team succeeded.”
“What are your orders, Boss?” Dominic asked.
Victor walked over to Lily. He took a clean linen handkerchief from his pocket and gently, tenderly wrapped it around the laceration on her arm, tying it off with steady hands. His fingers lingered against her skin, warm and possessing.
May you like
“Prep the convoy,” Victor said, looking directly into Lily’s amber eyes. “We are going to the airport. It is time to close the Montigue account forever.”
***
