Chapter 5 - The Interrogation

Valerie dropped her clipboard, the papers scattering across the polished floor. Tears welled in her eyes, not from remorse, but from sheer, unadulterated terror.

"I didn't give her the poison!" Valerie cried, falling to her knees. "I swear on my mother's grave! I only let her stay because... because she begged me! She said men were hunting her, men from the Vane syndicate who wanted the ledgers. She said if I turned her in, they would kill her and her baby!"

Marco stepped forward, drawing his sidearm and casually checking the slide. "And who authorized her payroll vouchers, Valerie? Who signed off on a ghost employee working double shifts for cash under the table?"

"It was Victor," Valerie sobbed, pointing a shaking finger across the table.

All eyes snapped to Victor, the syndicate's chief financial officer, who had remained suspiciously quiet throughout the entire meeting. Victor’s face remained frozen in a polite, chilling smile. Slowly, he reached into his suit jacket—not for a weapon, but to adjust his silk tie.

"Valerie, you always were remarkably bad at keeping secrets," Victor said smoothly, his voice devoid of panic. He didn't deny it. Instead, he leaned back in his leather chair, crossing his legs as if he were discussing quarterly stock dividends rather than attempted murder.

Lorenzo’s eyes narrowed into slits of pure venom. "Victor."

"Hello, Lorenzo," Victor replied, chuckling softly. "You really thought Elena was hiding out of fear of the Vane family? Please. The Vane syndicate collapsed four years ago. She was hiding from you. Because she knew that the moment you found out her father didn't steal your money—that you were the one who authorized the asset seizure that ruined her family—you’d hunt her down to the ends of the earth."

Lorenzo froze. A cold sweat broke out across the back of his neck. The ledger wasn't a list of stolen funds. It was a record of his own family’s illegal embezzlement—an internal conspiracy that his grandfather had covered up by framing Elena’s father.

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The rain in the lower district did not fall; it drifted like smoke, slic...

The word mother hung in the sterile terminal air like a frozen dagger.

"And the child?" Lorenzo asked, his voice dropping to a lethal whisper. "Is Lily my blood, too?"

Victor’s smile faded, replaced by a grim, knowing look. "Figure it out, boss. Elena was pregnant when she fled your estate five years ago. Do the math on the kid's age. You've been hunting your own ghost while trying to murder your own flesh and blood."