Chapter 15 - THE DYING WISHAdrian’s eyes drifted upward, searching my face as if trying to find some trace of the frightened, submissive wife he thought he had discarded eight years ago.
"I didn't bring you here to beg for forgiveness, Victoria," Adrian muttered, his voice dropping to a fragile plea. "I know damn well I don't deserve it. But my lawyers... they found out about her. They told me she has my eyes."
"She has my strength," I snapped back instantly, stepping closer, the air between us crackling with static tension. "And she will never, ever carry your name."
"Just... let me see her," Adrian pleaded, a sudden, desperate tear spilling over his sunken eyelid and cutting a clean path down his stubbled cheek. "Before I go into the dark. Just a photograph. Proof that I left something behind in this world besides blood and prison bars."
I looked down at him. A man who had ordered executions without blinking, who had treated human lives like disposable poker chips, was now reduced to begging his ex-wife for a scrap of memory.
There was no satisfaction in it. Only a profound, hollow emptiness.
"You don't get to ask for a family, Adrian," I said softly, my voice devoid of anger, carrying only absolute finality. "You had one. You chose power, extortion, and control instead. You traded your daughter for an empire of ash."
I reached into my handbag, pulled out a plain white envelope, and tossed it onto the metal tray beside his water pitcher.
"What's this?" he whispered, staring at it.
May you like
"A single photograph," I said. "Taken on her fifth birthday yesterday. She is smart, she is fearless, and she doesn't even know what a Moretti is. And that is my greatest victory."
Before he could reach out with his trembling hand to open it, I turned on my heel and walked toward the door.
