Chapter 17

The Devil's Bloodline

The room felt way too quiet.

I stood over the conference table, my eyes darting across the project files from the flash drive, like a surgeon studying a patient’s vital signs.

I saw names, transactions, blood money disguised as logistics. Dates matched up with every mysterious death in my mom’s notes.

Vera and Nico were nearby, just watching me.

Damian stood behind me, arms crossed, his expression hard to read.

Finally, I pointed at a folder labeled 03M-Geneva.  “This is the pipeline massacre. Here are the six bank records, all encrypted through dummy crops. The payout came from Lucien’s personal offshore account.”

“Which means,” Nico murmured, “he didn’t just authorize it. He ordered it.”

“And my father was collateral,” I added.

Damian let out a deep breath. “If we leak this, Lucien loses his council seat.”

“No, we don’t just leak it. We bleed him first.”

Vera raised an eyebrow. “You’re starting to sound more like Damian every day.”

“No,” Damian corrected. “She’s more dangerous because she knows how to wait.”

By midnight, I’d put together a five-phase leak plan with Vera and Nico. Each piece of information was destined for a specific outlet, offshore journalists and corrupt council members ready to change sides if things went south.

Every file we released would push Lucien further into isolation, tearing apart his alliances piece by piece.

It was a strategy wrapped in vengeance.

But by dawn, the war struck back.

An explosion rocked the East Side orphanage. It wasn’t a major target, just a quiet building connected to my mother’s charity work. Her last good deeds.

I got the call from Vera.

“Lucien sent a message no kids were there. But he made sure you’d feel it.”

My chest tightened. He had hit my mother’s legacy.

“He’s baiting you,” she warned.

Just then, Damian walked in as I hung up.

“Lucien struck.”

He read my face instantly. “Where?”

“The orphanage. He’s not just going after power now he’s targeting memories, identity.”

“We retaliate,” he insisted.

“No, we finish this now.”

We gathered in the old armory beneath the estate, where Cross’s wars were once planned.

Everyone was there. Vera, Luca, Nico, and even an old council sympathizer that Damian had once exiled.

I walked in dressed in black, my mother’s sapphire ring catching the overhead lights.

“I have what Lucien fears the most,” I began. “Proof, strategy, and witnesses.” I held up the drive.

But fear isn’t enough anymore.

Damian watched as I placed it on the table, like I was making a declaration.

“I’m not here to beg for help. I’m telling you to choose a side. Right now.”

Then Nico stood up. “I watched my cousin die in that massacre. I’m with you.”

Vera stepped forward. “You turned chaos into strategy. Let’s finish this.”

One by one, they stood up.

And for the first time in my life, I realized I wasn’t chasing my mother’s ghost anymore.

I was in charge.

“She’s got the drive,”

Yes, sir.

“And what did I say when they met her face-to-face? That girl was never weak, just unfinished.”

“Bring me Marina. It’s time for her to earn her place in this war.”

Then the leak started. Three files. Quiet. Sharp.

The first one revealed an illegal arms deal with Lucien and a Turkish warlord.

The second uncovered a council vote he messed with back in 2017.

The third was the tiniest of the bunch.

Just a small payment to an unnamed doctor. But it had the biggest implications.

Because the name buried in that file? Encrypted and coded, it was Elena Marco.

My mother.

And the date on that transaction? Just three weeks before her supposed accident.

I couldn’t catch my breath as I stared at the document, my heart pounding in my ears.

He paid off a doctor, then she died.

Damian leaned closer to me. “You think he had her killed?”

No, I know he did.

Marina told me she was pregnant. She was going to have another child. And Lucien couldn’t let that happen.

Damian’s fist tightened. “That child would’ve been a second heir. Another link in the Marco bloodline.”

I nodded, tears brimming in my eyes, too stunned to speak.

He didn’t want her legacy to grow. He wanted to wipe it out.

Without saying a word, I stood up and walked to the balcony.

The city below sparkled, blissfully unaware of the storm brewing.

Damian followed me.

“Talk to me.”

I met his gaze. He killed her. My mother. My unborn sibling. He didn’t just take my father’s life; he destroyed everything she fought to protect.

“Then we burn it all down.”

No, not burn it. He frowned. “Then what?”

I turned to him. We rebuild. We take everything Lucien built and make it ours. We’ll erase his name and rewrite history with mine.

“You gave Claire the drive,”

She needed to know. “But she won’t survive this.”

She already has. “She’s not her mother.”

No, she’s worse.