Chapter 70
Emily Windsor's POV
Luke felt this astronomical security still wasn't enough weight.
Looking at the near-desperate madness in his eyes, my heart melted into a tender ache.
This man who commanded the business world like a king became clumsy as a child offering his most precious treasure for the first time when facing me—terrified that what he gave wasn't enough, wasn't good enough.
Just as I was about to refuse again, urgent high heels clattered through the hallway outside the study, approaching like a sudden downpour.
"Luke! Emily's in danger! You need to save her—now!"
Lily's panicked voice crashed into the room like a bomb.
Luke and I locked eyes, both catching the flash of surprise in the other's gaze.
The next second, we moved almost reflexively.
He swiftly shoved the share transfer agreement back into the safe while I slipped my phone into my pocket—our movements so synchronized we looked like accomplices covering up a crime.
The bookshelf had barely slid back into place when the study door burst open from outside.
Lily stormed in like a whirlwind, undisguised panic written across her face, her phone clutched tightly in her hand—the screen displaying the red location pin I'd just shared.
"Luke! She's—" Lily's words died the instant she registered the scene before her.
In the study, Luke and I stood there, perfectly safe and sound.
I was even still wearing his suit jacket—the one he'd draped over my shoulders by the river, still warm from his body heat.
The air seemed to freeze.
The panic on Lily's face morphed into bewilderment, then disbelief, and finally—she seemed to catch the hint of barely suppressed amusement at the corner of Luke's lips.
"You two..." She looked from me to her brother, her beautiful face flushing a suspicious shade of red—whether from anger or embarrassment was unclear.
I belatedly remembered that in my panic, I'd sent that message to our four-person group chat and shared my location.
Luke had received the message and rushed to save me, and clearly Lily had too.
She'd just arrived a step too late—straight to the penthouse.
"Didn't you say you were cornered? Didn't you say it was urgent?" Lily forcibly swallowed her embarrassment and reverted to her usual attitude of looking down on everyone, turning her ire on me. "Emily, do you have any idea what the consequences are for filing a false alarm?"
"I didn't file a false alarm." I gathered myself, extracting from that emotional whirlpool to become Miss Windsor again—cool and rational.
I pulled out my phone, opened the video I'd secretly recorded outside the abandoned factory, and handed it to her. "We have real business to discuss."
Lily took the phone suspiciously. The moment she saw Hank's obsequious face in the video and the several black-clad men with vicious auras on the other side, her expression darkened instantly.
"...Just take care of that woman, and Luke will be a bird with clipped wings..."
Hank's venomous words emanated from the phone's speaker, and the temperature in the study seemed to plummet several degrees.
Fury ignited in Lily's eyes, while Luke, who had been silent throughout, radiated a sharp and dangerous energy.
"That old bastard!" Lily spat through clenched teeth. Then, as if discovering something, she rewound the video repeatedly, zooming in on the background of where Hank had parked.
"This location..." Her brow furrowed as she seemed to be identifying something. Suddenly, her pupils contracted and her face turned extremely ugly. "This is Lowe family territory! That abandoned steel mill in the suburbs—the Lowe family bought it at auction a few years ago planning to use it as a logistics hub. The project went belly-up and it's been sitting there abandoned ever since."
Lowe family?
The name sent a chill through me.
In New York's elite circles, only the Lowe family could stand toe-to-toe with the Victor family.
On the surface, the two families stayed out of each other's way. Underneath, they clashed constantly—each other's most formidable rival.
"Hank, that traitorous son of a bitch!" Lily completely exploded. She slapped the phone back into my hand, her beautiful face filled with murderous intent. "He actually dared to defect! No wonder he had the balls to torch the warehouse—he'd already found himself a new master!"
Every mystery clicked into place in that moment.
Why had Hank been willing to damage his own interests just to destroy my proposal? Because he needed to offer proof of loyalty to his new master.
Why was he so certain that without me, Luke would be no threat? Because this was intelligence fed to him by the Lowe family—a rival's external assessment of my role.
The Lowe family had clearly identified me as the most critical piece in Luke's transformation plan.
They didn't just want to watch the Victor family tear itself apart—they wanted to use Hank as their pawn to directly sever Luke's right arm.
"I'm taking people right now to chop up that old bastard and all those traitors under him!" Lily raged, turning to storm out.
"Come back."
Luke finally spoke, his voice cold as ice.
He took the phone from my hand and watched the video once through, his face devoid of Lily's explosive anger—only an unfathomable, calculating coldness.
"Lowe family..." He murmured the name softly, his eyes radiating undisguised killing intent. "They finally couldn't resist—they made their move."
He turned his head, his gaze falling on me, that sharpness and coldness gradually replaced by something far more complex.
"Emily," he looked at me, each word deliberate, as if issuing a new directive, "send this video anonymously to Professor Douglas."
My heart jolted as I instantly grasped his intention.
"You want the FBI to investigate the Lowe family?"
"Don't they want to investigate human trafficking?" A chilling arc curved Luke's lips. "Hank said, 'the next shipment to the island can't have any more mishaps.' The Lowe family's property is the perfect breakthrough point. Let them tear each other apart—isn't that much cleaner than getting our hands dirty?"
Using a borrowed knife to kill.
And borrowing the sharpest blade of all—the federal government's.
Hank and the Lowe family would never dream that the conspiracy they'd used to target me had, in the blink of an eye, become ironclad evidence I was handing to the FBI to use against them.
"Luke, that's letting them off too easy!" Lily protested.
"No," Luke shook his head, his gaze profound, "this is just the appetizer. What I want is to make the Lowe family pay the most devastating price for their stupidity."
He looked at me, storm clouds gathering in those dark eyes—the terrible calm before the deluge.
"Miss Windsor," he addressed me, "I've set the stage for you. Now it's time for you, the leading lady, to shake up all of New York."
I smiled. "Gladly."