Chapter 141
POV Victoria
The house was in Greenwich.
Not the polished Greenwich of mansions overlooking the Sound. The other Greenwich—the one few people know—the one full of forgotten properties my family bought in the eighties with money that never appeared on any tax record. Three hectares of dense forest, a two-story stone house at the end of a nameless road, no visible neighbors, no cameras for miles around.
My father used it for meetings that couldn’t have minutes.
I was using it now for something better.
I walked downstairs at eleven in the morning with a cup of coffee in one hand and my phone in the other. Flat shoes, dark jeans, a gray cashmere sweater. No makeup. No heels. No performance of the Harrington heiress I’d been maintaining in public for years. Here I didn’t need a role. Here I was just me.
And for the first time in years, that felt right.
The basement had a reinforced door at the end of the hallway. I entered the code. The door gave way with that heavy sound of mechanisms that cost more than a car.
I went down.
Ten concrete steps. A wide room at the bottom, lit with harsh fluorescent light, walls painted an institutional beige that made it feel more like a hospital waiting room than captivity. A single bed against the wall. A small table. A bathroom separated by a door with no lock. And in the center, sitting on a chair with her hands tied to the back—
Lucía Sandoval.
Over a year without seeing her, and she looked exactly as I remembered.
Thinner. More tired. But the same face I saw that afternoon in Boston when I knocked on her door and politely told her to leave. The same face that had obsessed my ex-husband for months. The same face that had cost me a marriage, a company, a family, and the last shred of dignity I had left.
She lifted her head when she heard me.
When she saw me, her eyes widened with the expression I had been waiting months to see. Pure recognition. Confirmed terror. The face of a woman who understands exactly who has her—and why.
“Hello, Lucía. Long time.”
“Where is my son?”
Of course. Her first words.
“Your son is fine. Sleeping upstairs in a heated room with a nanny who knows how to take care of babies better than you. He’s perfectly fine.”
“I want to see him.”
“You’ll see him. When I decide. If I decide.”
I took a sip of coffee and stopped three steps away from her. Close enough for her to see me clearly. Far enough that if she tried to spit, she wouldn’t reach me.
“You must have a lot of questions. Why you’re here. How I found you. What I want. I’ll save you the suspense—I have little time and a lot to do today.”
“Victoria, please—”
“Quiet. Listen.”
She went silent. Her tied hands tightened against the chair. Her chin trembled, but she didn’t cry. Some of that tough Bronx nurse was still in her.
“I’ve been chasing you for a year. Boston first. Then Quebec, where you thought the border would protect you. Bad decision. Because a hundred million dollars buys a lot of things, Lucía. It buys investigators who cross borders. It buys hitmen who speak French. It buys private planes that take off from remote airstrips in Vermont and land in other remote airstrips in Connecticut without anyone recording anything. We brought you like a package, Lucía. Ten hours asleep with your baby beside you, and no one in the world knows you crossed the border.”
Lucía stared at me without blinking.
“How did you get us out?”
“Back roads in Quebec to a private airstrip my father has known since the nineties. From there, a small plane to Vermont. Then a van here. Eleven hours total. You asleep the whole time. Your baby almost the whole time. The nanny I hired woke him twice to feed him. He’s been better cared for than you probably managed.”
“They won’t look for us here. No one knows we’re in the U.S.”
“Exactly.”
I smiled.
“That’s the beauty of the plan. While Gabriel sends investigators to search for you in Quebec and Boston and every city you’ve ever lived in, you’ll be ninety kilometers from his office. And he’ll have no way of knowing. Because officially, according to Canadian and U.S. migration records, Lucía Sandoval and her baby are still living in a small house in Saint-Jérôme, Quebec, where they were last seen yesterday morning when you dropped the child off at daycare.”
“What do you want from me?”
“From you? Nothing. From Gabriel? Everything.”
Her face shifted—just a fraction—at his name.
I smiled wider.
“You still love him. After all this time. After he left you to marry me. After a full year in hiding without a single call from him. You still love him like an idiot. That’s going to cost you, Lucía.”
“Don’t hurt him, please.”
“Him? I’m not going to hurt him. What I’m going to do is worse.”
I walked to the table, set down my coffee, pulled out my phone, unlocked it slowly, and opened the camera.
“Look at me.”
“Why?”
“For a photo. Look at me, Lucía.”
She lifted her face with that restrained sadness poor women learn early. The face of someone who’s already lost everything before—and is calculating how much more can be taken.
I took the picture.
I checked it. Lucía tied to the chair, sweater wrinkled, eyes red but dry, a faint injection mark still visible on her neck. Clear enough to remove all doubt. Brutal enough to hit Gabriel in the spine.
Perfect.
I attached a message. Three lines.
I have what you’re looking for. This is going to cost you dearly, Gabriel. You’re going to pay for my brother’s death.
I hit send.
“Done. In five minutes, your lover will receive the worst message of his life.”
“Victoria, please. Let me go. I won’t tell anyone. I’ll take my son, go back to Quebec, disappear deeper, I won’t come out again. I swear you’ll never see me again.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because you already won. You wanted to separate me from Gabriel, and you’ve been doing that for a year without dirtying your hands.”
I laughed.
Short. Sharp.
“Lucía. Look at me. Do you really think this is about Gabriel?”
“…Isn’t it?”
“This is about my brother.”
I sat in front of her, legs crossed, coffee back in hand.
“My brother is dead. Dante. The only man in my family who truly understood me. The only one who defended me when my father used me like a chess piece. The only one who knew who I really was beneath all the performance. The Morettis killed him. Your lover, his best friend, and that whore of his sister. And they left me alive to watch them celebrate. To watch them reconcile, marry, have children—while I buried my only brother.”
Lucía swallowed.
“I had nothing to do with that.”
“No. You didn’t. But you’re in the middle. And sometimes the universe puts someone in the middle because that’s who has to settle the accounts. And that’s you.”
“Victoria—”
“Quiet.”
I leaned in, face level with hers.
“This is what’s going to happen. I already destroyed Moretti Enterprises. Last night. Didn’t you know? Of course not. You’ve been sedated and flown for twelve hours. But I’ll tell you so you understand. We hacked the servers. Drained the accounts. Released the contracts. The company Gabriel’s grandfather built over seventy years is now worth forty percent of what it was yesterday. And it hasn’t even taken the penalties from its Chinese partners yet. By tomorrow at noon, Moretti Enterprises will be declaring technical insolvency.”
Lucía didn’t blink.
“And that’s just the first course. The second is this. This photo I just sent your lover. It will arrive exactly when he’s trying to coordinate a legal response to the worst corporate crisis in his family’s history. And he’ll have to choose—save the company, or save you. And whatever he chooses, he loses. Because while he decides, I’ll make another decision.”
“Which one?”
“To kill you.”
I said it like ordering coffee.
“And your son.”
That part, I said more quietly.
For pleasure.
Lucía started shaking—completely. Not controlled. The deep, primal tremor of an animal that knows it’s about to die.
“No, please. Not my son. I swear—kill me. Do whatever you want to me. But not him.”
“Your son is half Moretti, Lucía. And the Morettis pay.”
“He’s eleven months old. He’s a baby. Please.”
“Quiet.”
“Please—”
“Quiet, Lucía. Or I’ll decide right now.”
She stopped.
I stepped back, watching her cry silently—the kind of crying women learn when they’ve cried too much in life.
“I’ll think about the baby. I promise nothing. But I’ll think about it.”
“Victoria…”
“One more word and I decide now. Be quiet.”
She obeyed.
I walked to the door. Before leaving, I turned once more.
“I’ll leave you to think. I’m going upstairs to eat something and wait for your lover’s response. When he answers, we’ll talk again. In the meantime, enjoy the room. It’s heated. Private bathroom. More comfort than you’ve probably had in the past year in Quebec.”
“Victoria.”
“What?”
“My son. Please let me see him.”
“No.”
I closed the door.
Upstairs, the living room faced the forest. Floor-to-ceiling windows filled with gray November light filtering through bare trees. A lit fireplace. A leather sofa my father had reupholstered twenty years ago. A low table with a bottle of ’98 Bordeaux.
I poured a glass.
Turned on the TV.
I had been waiting all morning for this. News confirming what I already knew. Moretti Enterprises stock collapsing. Analysts calling it the worst corporate crisis of the year. Gabriel walking out of the tower with the face of a man watching his empire sink in real time.
Twelve months planning.
Perfect.
I switched to Bloomberg.
The ticker ran.
Moretti.
Green.
Not red.
Green.
I set the glass down slowly.
Turned up the volume.
“…what is undoubtedly being called the fastest corporate recovery in recent Wall Street history…”
“No.”
“…the strategic merger between Moretti Enterprises and Valmont International Bank…”
“No.”
“…has driven shares up 34%…”
“No.”
The screen switched.
Gabriel.
Perfect suit. Controlled. Calm.
As if nothing had happened.
As if I hadn’t just sent him Lucía’s photo.
“No.”
I stood.
The glass shattered against the marble.
“NO!”
I grabbed my phone.
Called Bao.
“What the hell happened?!”
“The Valmonts…”
“I PAID YOU TWO MILLION—”
“They injected capital—”
I hung up.
The Valmonts.
Of course.
I had underestimated all of them.
Gael. Andrés. Gabriel.
And now—
Gabriel had read my message.
Eight minutes ago.
No reply.
“Son of a bitch.”
That meant two things.
He was calculating.
And he wasn’t broken anymore.
He was dangerous.
I sat down.
Cold. Precise.
If he didn’t respond in six hours, I’d send another photo.
If he still didn’t—
I’d kill the baby first.
Then Lucía.
Then disappear.
I looked at Lucía’s photo again.
Beautiful.
Simple.
That’s why he chose her.
That’s why she would die.
I poured another glass.
Raised it.
“To the next move.”
And drank.