Chapter 4 The Price of Truth
She walked out of Sofia's sitting room like nothing had happened.
That was the one thing her father accidentally taught her... how to keep her face calm even when everything inside her was falling apart. She walked down the corridor, shoulders straight, chin up, hands loose. Counted her steps the way she used to as a kid when the house got loud and scary.
Fourteen steps to the east corridor. Left turn. Twelve steps to the garden door.
Cold afternoon air. She walked straight to the far end of the stone terrace where the tall hedges blocked the view from the house.
Sixty seconds. She gave herself exactly sixty seconds.
Her mother was alive.
Fifteen years. Fifteen fucking years they told her she was gone. That she disappeared. That people leave and that's just how life is. And the whole time she was somewhere in a small town in Baja California, breathing, waking up every morning, living a small careful life.
Fifty seconds.
Sofia knew where she was. Sofia... the woman who always looked at her like she was something annoying in her perfect house... sat across from her with tea and calmly dropped the biggest bomb of her life.
She lost the count somewhere in the middle. The next number her brain produced was ten.
She curled her hand into a fist at her side and held it there.
What does Sofia want in return?
That was the only question that mattered. Not the fifteen years. Not the blurry picture of her mother's face she could barely remember anymore.
What does Sofia want.
Ten seconds.
She turned around and went to find Marco.
He was in the small security room off the main corridor. Old coffee and tension. When she appeared in the doorway his eyes found her immediately — that quick check. Are you hurt. What happened.
She watched him try to read her face and fail.
"Clear the room," he said to the two guys at the monitors without looking at them.
They left fast. Door closed.
"Sofia called me for a private meeting. No security. I went."
His jaw tightened. "I told you—"
"She told me my mother is alive."
The room went completely quiet. The monitors kept cycling — gate, grounds, the garden where she had just been standing. Marco stood there and something moved through him. Almost nothing on the outside. But she saw it. His chest expanded once, slowly, like a man absorbing a blow and refusing to move from it.
"You knew," she said. Voice too calm. "Not that she was alive maybe. But you knew the story I was told wasn't true."
"Gia—"
"Which part did you know?"
He looked at her for a long moment. Deciding how much truth the room could hold.
"That she didn't just disappear," he said finally. "That she was moved. Your father ordered it through the head of security before me." He paused. "They kept her alive as leverage."
The word leverage hit her square in the sternum. Spread through her whole body cold and slow.
"How long have you known?"
"Six months."
Six months. The same six months he had been watching her. Everything clicked into place — the secret watching, the investigation, the war he was fighting inside this house. And underneath all of it, this. Six months. Said nothing.
"Why." Not an accusation. She needed to understand.
Something painful crossed his face. Fast. Gone. "Because I found out from a file. And in that file there was a second name. Someone who had been in contact with your mother before she was taken."
She waited.
"My fiancée," Marco said. "Paige. She and your mother knew each other."
The room tilted.
"They knew each other," she repeated.
"Paige was trying to help her. She found evidence of what your father was doing — not just to your mother, but the bigger operation. The trafficking. The money. She was building a case. She took it to the wrong person."
"My father."
"He had her killed." Flat. Like he had said it to himself so many times the words had been worn smooth. But his hands — she saw it — curled once into fists at his sides and released. "Then he came to me with a story about a rival family. I believed him. I took his oath. I buried her. And I have been working for the man who ordered her death for seven years."
The monitors kept cycling. Gate. Grounds. Garden.
She looked at Marco — this man made of control and scars and grief he had carried so long it had become part of his bones — and understood something that changed everything.
He didn't start investigating because of the gala shooting. Not loyalty. Not money.
He was doing it for Paige.
And if her father won — if this collapsed before the truth came out — then Paige died for nothing. Seven years of Marco working for the man who killed her, carrying that weight, calling it duty. All of it for nothing.
That was his stake. Not just his life. The only thing that made the last seven years mean anything at all.
"Sofia's offer is real," he said, pulling himself back. "She knows where your mother is. But she's not giving it for free."
"I know."
"Which means going to Baja without a plan—"
"I know, Marco." She said his name the way he said hers — deliberate. "I understand what she wants. But I don't care. She's my mother."
He looked at her. "I know," he said. That was all.
Heavy silence. Two people who had just handed each other something dangerous and were still deciding what to do with it.
"What do we need?" she asked.
"The identity of whoever controls the second shell company. And something strong enough to hold over Sofia so she gives us the location without being able to weaponise it after."
"How long?"
"Days. Maybe less if—"
The burner phone on the desk lit up.
Marco looked at it. And she saw something in him she hadn't seen before — not in the ballroom, not in the study. The stillness that came over him now was different. The stillness of someone taking a hit they weren't ready for and refusing to let it show.
He turned the phone so she could see the screen.
An alert from his own security system — a tripwire he had set for anyone inside the estate searching the shell company names or account numbers from the transfers. Someone had just triggered it.
Nine minutes ago.
From inside the estate.
She looked at the device ID.
Read it twice.
Luca.
Marco was already at the main monitor. He pulled up the east corridor camera and scrolled back nine minutes. They stood side by side and watched.
Luca on the screen — grainy, shoulders hunched, phone in both hands. Kept looking left and right like he was scared someone would catch him. He typed something. Stopped. Looked around again. Then he looked at whatever had come back on his screen and went very still.
Marco paused the feed.
The frozen image caught Luca's face clearly. He wasn't playing some smart game. Wasn't being strategic.
He looked terrified.
"He's not digging for information," she said. "He's covering something up."
Marco's eyes stayed on the frozen screen. On Luca's scared face.
"Or," Marco said, voice low and careful, "he's sending it to someone."
She looked at him.
"The question is who he sent it to in the last nine minutes."