Chapter 204 HOUSE OF CARDS
KAI’S POINT OF VIEW.
I reached into the envelope and pulled out a stack of documents. Glancing at them, I nodded before I looked directly at Irene, the Grand Chair of the Orsini clan.
"Irene, you remember Everleigh's signature, don't you? You remember the woman who sat at your table before she disappeared into a tragic illness? Hell, I think you would have gotten the report of her unfortunate death tomorrow night….if certain people had their way every time." Denise, Morgan….and Armando looked away immediately, digging their heels into the floor.
Irene narrowed her eyes, her regal posture stiffening. She glared at me, eyes as sharp as knives and a shark’s tooth digging into my sides. An intimidation tactic she used on everyone. Irene was a bully…but only to those who succumbed. To me, she was nothing more than the scared kid who thought she could keep everyone under her thumb if she booed loudly enough.
"I remember a woman of grace, Kai. Someone raised in this society, filled with class, poise, elegance….Unlike what I see on this floor tonight."
"Then look at this." I held up the first document. "A legal marriage certificate. Everleigh Cruz and Armando De La Vista. Dated 2005. And right underneath it? A medical directive signed by Denise Thorne in 2012, while Everleigh was still legally the only Mrs. De La Vista. You weren't a wife, Denise. You were a squatter with a forged marriage license."
"That’s a lie!" Denise screamed, lunging for the stage, but Silas’s cane blocked her path with a dull thud against the marble.
"Sit. Down," Silas rumbled. It wasn’t loud, but it had enough of a rumble to get everyone unsettled. Denise glanced at him, and then her husband, who looked like he’d shrank every minute I stood on here.
Denise stumbled back with a sputter, her chest heaving rapidly, her expensive perfume soured by the sweat of a cornered animal stunk so bad, I had to fight the urge to cover my nose. Everyone else didn’t, though….they avoided her like a plague, leaving her, Morgan, and Armando in the center of a very large circle. Beside her, Morgan looked like she was having a neurological break; her eyes darting between the massive screens behind me, and all over the hall, and the Orsini elders, her mouth opening and closing without a sound.
"You like to talk about legitimate marriages and children, Irene?" I asked, my voice smooth but still as lethal as needed. I didn't wait for her answer. "You think you haven’t been lied to? You think everyone gives a shit enough about you to be honest? Let’s see how deeply you’ve been played."
I tapped the screen on the podium, and the massive LED display behind me flickered. The grainy, photoshopped images of Everleigh were erased, replaced by the sterile, undeniable truth of a DNA forensic report.
"This is the profile of Morgan De La Vista," I announced, pointing at the lines on the screen. "And this is Armando’s. For eighteen years, you’ve all been bowing to a princess who doesn't have a single drop of De La Vista or Orsini blood in her veins. She’s the daughter of a stable hand from a summer estate in Provence, a man Denise paid off to disappear the same way she tried to make Everleigh disappear. A man she had killed….just like she tried to have Everleigh murdered weeks ago…hell, years ago!"
The collective gasp from the Orsini clan sounded like a vacuum. Irene’s face turned a shade of purple I’d never seen on a human being. She looked at Morgan not with anger, but with the bone-deep revulsion one might reserve for a maggot hidden in weeks-long rotten food.
"And the medical directive?" I continued, my gaze locking onto Denise. "The one you signed in 2012? It wasn't for palliative care, was it? It was a slow-acting neurotoxin regimen. Not only did you sign it, but you have stolen Everleigh’s identity all these years, playing her in the company she made the mistake of saving with that pathetic coward of a man called Armando.
You signed everything with her signature, pretended to be a co-founder behind the scenes while paying multiple doctors, and hospitals to reject the sickly woman. That was while you paid someone else to plant poisoned flowers in her garden, something out of sight so she would slowly inhale the toxins each day.
You knew how much she loved flowers, and hoped she and her daughter would die naturally from it.
You never bargained for her to fall sick with lung cancer. When you got the information from your spies, you decided to pay doctors to fool her into thinking she really had the cancer, so they would charge her ridiculous fees while keeping her away, as if she had a plague.
She had a simple blood infection, treatable with tonics that anyone could get from a pharmacy.”
“That’s a lie!” Morgan yelled. But I clicked the remote, and the screen flickered again, revealing the medical report I got. Killian's family had connections with every hospital around America, Europe, and Asia. I got this with one phone call from him. This is proof. The real medical report from a small hospital in Denver, Colorado. You tried to have this buried and burned…but see, everything must come to the light at the end of the day, Denise, Morgan, and Armando.” I chuckled, the sound humorless.
“You were going to finish her off six months ago, but you stopped halfway. Not only because you needed to see her suffer like the sick fucks you are, but because you realized that Armando’s parents loved Everleigh so much, they planned that once she dies, everything in that company, everything they left behind, would go to her child. If she had no child or children, it would head straight to charity.” Aurora gasped, her eyes wide with sorrow…and relief. I flashed her a soft smile, the feeling of elation in my chest at the thought of her finally getting justice. That too in a room full of people who cast her off.
."You were keeping her trapped. You were drowning her in her own body while you spent her inheritance on handbags and hush money."
"Armando, do something!" Denise shrieked, turning to her husband. "He’s making it up! He’s crazy, just like his mother!"
That was her final mistake.