Chapter 6 - The Confession on the Terrace
The elevator doors of the penthouse opened twenty minutes later, revealing Sabine Kessler.
She was dressed in a pristine cream cashmere coat, holding a small leather handbag, her makeup perfectly arranged despite the early hour.
“Cassian, darling,” she called out, stepping into the grand foyer with a delicate, sympathetic smile. “The doorman said you called for an emergency meeting. What on earth has happened? Is Eloan still throwing her tantrum?”
Cassian didn't turn around immediately.
He was standing by the floor-to-ceiling glass wall, staring out over the foggy expanse of Lake Michigan, his knuckles white around an unlit cigar.
“Eloan is missing,” he said, his voice flat, dangerously quiet, and devoid of any human warmth.
Sabine gasped softly, pressing a manicured hand to her collarbone. “Oh, no… that’s terrible! Do you think she went back to her family in Oregon? She’s always been so dramatic when she doesn't get her way—”
“Her cottage was attacked by four armed men with automatic weapons, Sabine,” Cassian interrupted, turning slowly to face her.
His eyes were bloodshot, his jaw rigid as iron, the veins along his neck pulsing with barely suppressed violence.
Sabine’s eyes flickered with a sudden, imperceptible flash of calculation before she recovered her horrified expression.
“Automatic weapons? In Wisconsin? Good heavens, Cassian, who would do such a thing? Was it a home invasion? A robbery?”
Cassian took three slow, heavy steps toward her.
He pulled his phone from his trousers, tapped the screen, and placed it flat on the glass coffee table between them.
A digital audio file began to play.
It was an intercepted phone call recorded at 1:15 AM—the exact time Cassian had been sitting on Sabine’s sofa, comforting her while she pretended to shake from fear.
“Vance, he’s still here,” Sabine’s voice rang through the speaker, crisp, clear, and completely devoid of tears. “He’s not going back to Michigan Avenue until morning. Move your extraction team to the cottage before daybreak. And make sure the child doesn't survive the transport. If there's an heir, Cassian will never liquidate his shares.”
The room plunged into an arctic, suffocating silence.
Sabine froze, the color draining from her cheeks until she looked like a plaster statue. Her lips parted, but no sound came out.
“My brother Adrian didn't die in an industrial accident, did he?” Cassian whispered, his voice shaking with a rage so absolute that the air around him seemed to crackle.
“Cassian… please…” she stammered, backing toward the elevator doors. “It’s not what it sounds like… Vance threatened me! He said he would destroy my family if I didn't help him!”
“Adrian died because you were skimming kickbacks from our shipping contracts, and he threatened to expose you to the board,” Cassian said, stepping closer with every word. “I spent six years financing your luxury lifestyle, neglecting my own home, and abandoning my pregnant wife because I thought I owed your dead brother a debt of honor.”
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He reached out, his hand closing around her delicate cashmere lapels with the force of a vice, lifting her an inch off the marble floor.
“Where is my wife, Sabine?” he growled into her face, his spit landing on her cheek. “Tell me where Vance took her, or I swear on my child’s life, you will spend the rest of your existence in a concrete hole beneath the Illinois state line.”
