Chapter 6 - A Web of Lies Unravels“You can’t kill me, Daniel,” Evelyn choked out, her hands clawing futilely at his wrist. “If I die... the encrypted files go live to the federal prosecutor’s office. Every bank account, every asset, every safehouse—synchronized to upload in sixty seconds if my biometric pulse stops.”
Daniel’s finger tightened on the trigger. The hammer clicked back, a metallic sound that signaled the absolute point of no return.
“Let it burn,” Daniel snarled. “I don’t care about the money. I don’t care about the empire. You touched my son.”
“Dad, stop!”
Lucas’s small hands suddenly grabbed Daniel’s jacket, yanking backward with all his might. The boy’s face was soaked in fresh tears, his eyes wide with a plea that cut straight through the red mist blinding Daniel’s vision. “Don’t do it! If you shoot her, you’ll go away too! Who will stay with me?”
Daniel froze. The gun hovered inches from Evelyn’s throat. He looked down at his son—at the terrified, fragile little boy who had already lost his mother and was desperately trying to keep the last piece of his family from shattering completely.
Slowly, agonizingly, Daniel lowered the weapon.
Natalie seized the moment. Moving swiftly, she stepped forward, ripped the leather ledger from Evelyn’s loosening grip, and swept her leg out, kicking the older woman's feet out from under her. Evelyn hit the floor hard with a sharp gasp of pain.
Natalie didn’t hesitate; she grabbed a heavy silk curtain tie-back rope from the ruined window frame and bound Evelyn’s wrists securely behind her back in seconds.
“Where did you learn to do that?” Daniel asked, staring at Natalie in stunned disbelief as she hauled Evelyn up to her knees.
“Former military intelligence,” Natalie replied calmly, knotting the rope with clinical precision. “Domestic agency placement was... a career transition. Let’s just say I prefer taking care of broken things over breaking them.”
Evelyn spat blood onto the rug, her eyes burning with malice as she looked up at Daniel. “You think you’ve won, Brooks? Open the ledger. Look at page forty-two. See who funded the hit on your wife five years ago. It wasn’t Moretti. It was inside your own family.”
Daniel’s blood ran cold. He snatched the black leather book from Natalie’s hands, flipped frantically through the pages, and stopped dead at page forty-two.
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The name written at the bottom in neat, cursive ink made the room spin.
It wasn’t an enemy. It was someone currently sitting downstairs in the receiving parlor, waiting for news of the attack to finish.
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