Chapter 10 - The Ultimate Twist
Late into the night, after Sophia had gone upstairs to sleep, I sat alone in my dark study, holding the shattered silver box that Lily had slapped out of Ethan's hand hours earlier.
The police forensics unit had logged it, but I had kept the physical casing to examine the chemical residue myself.
I turned the tiny silver cylinder over under the light of my desk lamp.
That was when I noticed something impossible.
On the inside lining of the silver container, micro-engraved into the metal with precision technology, was a set of serial codes and a corporate emblem.
It wasn't a syndicate crest. It wasn't manufactured by a poison lab or a mob chemist.
It was stamped with the logo of Vanguard Bio-Tech—a high-tech genetic research corporation based out of Singapore.
And right below the logo was the client registration date: Three days ago.
My blood ran instantly cold.
Victoria couldn't have ordered this. She had been locked out of her accounts for two weeks, monitored by my financial team. Julian didn't have the clearance or the intelligence to contract an overseas bio-tech firm.
My mind raced back through every detail of the evening.
Lily.
A three-year-old child who moved with unnatural speed. A three-year-old child who knew the exact structural weak point to disable a grown woman's cane. A three-year-old child who had "stumbled" into the cold room at the exact moment the security cameras went dark.
I picked up the security tablet on my desk and manually bypassed the corrupted video files, running a deep-frame recovery algorithm on the five seconds before the feed died.
The screen flickered to life.
The footage showed the cold room. The man in the coat—a paid mercenary—was standing near the cake, opening the silver box.
Then, three-year-old Lily walked into the frame.
She didn't look scared. She didn't look like a toddler wandering around for strawberries.
She walked straight up to the mercenary, took the silver box from his hand with practiced, cold authority, and whispered something in his ear. The mercenary nodded respectfully, handed her the container, and vanished out the fire exit.
Lily had opened the silver box herself. She had placed the compound on the cake.
Then she had walked into the ballroom, waited until Ethan lifted the fork to his mouth, and slapped it away—creating the perfect dramatic scene to expose my mother, destroy my inner circle, and force me to bring Sophia and her into the absolute inner ring of the Moretti dynasty.
I sat frozen in my leather chair, staring at the screen in absolute horror.
From the doorway behind me, the floorboard creaked softly.
I turned slowly.
Standing in the shadows of the doorway was three-year-old Lily.
She wasn't wearing her untied white sneakers anymore. She was holding her small teddy bear by one arm. Her face held no childhood innocence—only a cold, calculating, ancient calm.
May you like
She looked straight into my eyes and smiled.
"You were always supposed to find out, Dominic," the toddler said, her voice clear, articulate, and completely devoid of a child's lisp. "My handlers told me you were smart."
