Chapter 7 - The Mastermind in the Nursery
Lucian ignored the flash drive entirely. He sank down onto one knee right there on the ballroom floor, uncaring of the silver dust from the shattered champagne flutes beneath his trousers. He was level with Leo now, close enough to see the exact shade of dark obsidian in the boy's eyes that matched his own. ""Why did you run, Serena?"" he whispered, his voice trembling with unshed tears, addressing me while staring hungrily at the son he had never held. ""I searched every mortuary. I dragged the harbor for three months. I killed the men who were supposed to guard you that night. I would have burned this entire continent to find your bones. Why did you take my boy from me?""
""Because you were in Paris,"" I replied, my voice dropping to an arctic whisper that echoed off the gilded ceiling. ""While Dr. Henderson was cutting my stomach open to save our dying child, you were wrapping your coat around Victoria Vance on a balcony at the Hôtel de Crillon. You whispered to our unborn son to wait for his father, and then you boarded a private jet to toast champagne with your mistress. You abandoned us before he even drew his first breath. I promised myself that night that you would never soil his innocence with your cowardice."" Lucian’s head jerked back as if he had been slapped across the face. Slowly, horrifyingly, his eyes shifted from me to Victoria, who had turned an ash-gray color beneath her heavy makeup.
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""I didn't..."" Lucian stammered, a rare look of dawning horror washing over his features. ""Serena, the Crillon... Victoria told me she had intercepted an assassination plot against you from the Romano faction in Marseille. She said the only way to neutralize the hit was to meet their broker at the Crillon in person. I was there to eliminate a threat to our nursery! I never touched her!"" Victoria backed away toward the exit, her heels clicking frantically against the marble, but Marcus and two of our private security operatives stepped out from the shadows, blocking the double doors with unyielding finality.
Leo suddenly stepped forward. He did not say a word, but he pulled a sleek tablet from his leather satchel, tapped the screen three times, and projected a high-resolution holographic timeline onto the massive mirrored wall behind the bar. It was a digital reconstruction of five years' worth of encrypted communications between Victoria Vance and the Romano syndicate. Victoria hadn't been Lucian’s loyal confidante; she had been the architect of our separation. She had paid Dr. Henderson three million dollars to forge my death certificate, fed Lucian false intelligence about phantom hitmen in Paris to pull him away from my labor bed, and orchestrated the leaks that drove me into hiding, intending to step into the vacant role of mafia queen the moment my body was declared lost. The five-year-old boy had uncovered the entire conspiracy in under forty-eight hours of deep-packet data mining.
