Chapter 21 - The Twin in the Shadows
One year of absolute silence was broken by a single delivery.
A heavy wooden box wrapped in velvet arrived at Harrington Tower during a board meeting. Inside rested an obsidian chess piece—a black King—and a vintage silver pocket watch ticking in reverse. The engraving on the silver back was crisp and chilling: The game didn't end with Santiago. It started with me.
Before I could call security, the boardroom doors swung wide open.
A man walked into the room who made my heart violently stop in my chest. He had Santiago’s exact face—the same high cheekbones, the same dark eyes, the same sharp jawline. But unlike Santiago, whose vanity was loud and unhinged, this man exuded a quiet, predatory chill that turned the air in the room into ice.
"Good afternoon, Clara," he said, his voice smoother and deeper than Santiago’s ever was.
"Santiago?" I gasped, my hand instinctively dropping toward the silent alarm beneath the conference table.
The man chuckled softly, pulling off his leather driving gloves. "Santiago was my younger twin by four minutes. He was the golden foolish boy my grandfather paraded around. I am Lucas Vance. The one they kept hidden in Europe to run the real business."
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The room erupted into shocked mutters. Santiago had a twin?
Lucas walked calmly to the head of the table, placing a stack of legal documents right in front of my chair. "My grandfather signed over total control of the Vance Family Trust to me twenty-four hours before his arrest. Which means I now hold forty-nine percent of the proxy votes in your board. And I’ve come to claim what’s mine."
