Chapter 542
Chapter 542
The Police Station
The door to the interrogation room was shut. Samuel was led inside.
Alexander and Zoey sat on the bench outside, neither of them saying a word.
Footsteps.
Finn came down the hall slowly, leaning on his cane.
He stopped in front of Alexander and looked at his grandson, his eyes heavy with something too complicated to name.
"Grandpa." Alexander stood. "Did you know? That uncle Samuel was the one who wanted me dead?"
Finn was quiet for a moment, then nodded.
"I'd just found out around that time." His voice was old and worn thin. "I tried to talk him out of it. He wouldn't listen."
Alexander drew a slow breath. "Why? What was his reason?"
Finn looked at him, and there was grief in it — and guilt.
"Because he believed you were responsible for the deaths of his wife and child."
Alexander went still.
The memory surfaced on its own.
Years ago, he had fallen into the ocean. It was Samuel's wife who had jumped in after him.
She pushed him up onto the boat. But she couldn't pull herself out of the water — her strength gave out.
By the time they got her aboard, she was burning with fever.
A few days later, she was gone.
She had been several months pregnant.
Alexander stood there, the color drained from his face.
Now he understood.
Samuel's hatred had nothing to do with the Garcia Group. Nothing to do with inheritance. It was this — Samuel blamed him for his wife's death, and the child they never got to meet.
Zoey's hand found his and held on tight.
The warmth of her fingers pulled him back, slowly, to the present.
He stared at the closed door of the interrogation room, and suddenly felt the weight of everything pressing down on him.
"Grandpa." His voice came out rough. "If I could go back — I'd rather I had been the one who never made it out of that water."
Finn rested a hand on his shoulder and said nothing.
Some debts can't be repaid. Not in a lifetime.
---
Samuel was dead.
The morning after he was brought in — before his interrogation even began — he was already gone.
The prison doctor called it cardiac arrest. But everyone knew better than to believe in that kind of coincidence.
It was the Viper organization.
Alexander stood in the study at the Garcia Villa, staring out at a sky the color of ash. His face was blank. But his eyes had gone cold — frozen solid beneath the surface.
He had been standing there for a long time.
Since the news came in that morning, he hadn't eaten, hadn't had a drop of water, hadn't spoken a word. He just stood there.
That was how Zoey found him when she pushed open the door.
She walked to his side without a word and leaned gently against him, pressing her warmth into his body.
Alexander shifted. His arm came around her waist and he pulled her into him.
"Zoey." His voice came out like something dragged over gravel.
"Yeah."
"Uncle Samuel is dead."
"I know."
"The Viper organization had him killed."
"Yeah."
Silence.
After a long moment, Alexander lowered his head and buried his face in the curve of her neck — like a wounded animal going to ground.
Zoey's hand moved slowly over his back.
She understood what he needed.
Not comfort. Not words. Just her, right here.
When Alexander finally lifted his head, there was a light in his eyes that Zoey recognized.
It was the look of a hunter that had locked onto his prey.
"I'm going to find whoever's running the Viper organization," he said, low and certain. "And I'm going to take the whole thing down."
Zoey looked at him and nodded. "Okay."
Alexander pulled out his phone and opened a message that had just come in — sent from overseas. Coordinates. The Viper organization's actual base of operations.
Zoey glanced at it, and something in her expression sharpened.
That location matched something she had just uncovered.
"The toxin used on my mother," she said, "was manufactured overseas."
Alexander turned to look at her.
"Peter's team made a breakthrough." She kept her voice even. "The origin of the toxin traces back to the same location as the Viper organization's base."
Their eyes met.
Neither of them needed to say it out loud.
The Viper organization hadn't just worked with Harold. Hadn't just worked with Samuel. They were connected to Lily's death — more than twenty years ago.
The web kept spreading.
---
Zoey didn't go overseas. She had something more pressing to handle first.
For the past several days, she had been quietly building a case against Scarlett.
Everything — from before Scarlett married into the King family, to the day she showed up with Cleo, to every calculated move she had made against Lily over the years.
Zoey had Scarlett brought to an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of the city.
Scarlett was zip-tied to a chair. When Zoey walked in, she was still wearing the expression of someone trying to hold it together.
"Zoey, what do you think you're doing? I'm warning you, I am—"
She didn't get to finish.
Zoey crossed the room and slapped her across the face.
Scarlett's head snapped to the side. Blood welled at the corner of her mouth.
"What the hell—?!" she screamed.
Zoey slapped her again.
Then a third time. A fourth.
Scarlett's cries echoed through the empty warehouse. Zoey's hand didn't stop.
She thought of her mother in those final days. She thought of every year she had spent being worked over by Scarlett and Cleo. She thought of the nights in prison — lightless, endless, one bleeding into the next.
"You were the one who poisoned my mother."
Zoey's voice was calm. Terrifyingly calm.
Scarlett's whole body was shaking. She opened her mouth to deny it — and couldn't. Not when she looked into those eyes.
There was no rage there. No hatred. Only a stillness so absolute it went beyond cold.
That kind of stillness was more frightening than any amount of fury.
When Zoey was done, she stopped.
Scarlett slumped in the chair, her face mottled purple and red, blood and tears smeared together, barely holding herself upright.
Zoey looked at her. The faintest curve touched the corner of her mouth.
"Call your daughter."
Scarlett's pupils contracted like pinpoints.
"No — don't—"
Zoey didn't acknowledge her. She pulled out her phone and sent a message to Beatrice.
Thirty minutes later, Beatrice arrived at the warehouse.
She pushed the door open — and froze.
Scarlett was bound to the chair, covered in blood, her face swollen beyond recognition, barely breathing.
"Mom—!" Beatrice screamed and lunged forward, but Zoey's men caught her before she could get close.
She fought against their grip and spun toward Zoey, eyes wild with fury.
"Zoey! You're out of your mind! How dare you do this to her! How dare you!"
Zoey watched her, expression unchanged.
"How dare I?" She repeated the words quietly, then smiled. "Because you're Cleo."
Beatrice went rigid.
The color bled out of her face in an instant. Her pupils blew wide. Her lips trembled, and not a single word came out.
Zoey stepped closer, looking down at her.
"Did you think a new face meant I wouldn't recognize you?"
Beatrice took one step back. Then another. Her spine hit the cold concrete wall.
"I — I'm not — you've got the wrong person—"
"Is that so?" Zoey said, even. "Then explain the DNA test. You and Scarlett — biological mother and daughter. And Cleo happens to be Scarlett's daughter."
The last trace of color left Beatrice's face.
Her mouth opened. She searched for something — a denial, an explanation, anything — and found nothing.
Zoey looked at her. No hatred. No resentment. Only the quiet of someone who had just finished something long overdue.
"Cleo. You lost."
Beatrice slid down the wall and crumpled to the floor.
She looked at Scarlett — barely alive, barely there — and broke down completely.
"Why—" Her voice tore, raw and ragged, like something wounded that had run out of places to run. "Why are you doing this to me — I finally had a new life — I finally had something — you had no right—"
Zoey didn't respond. She turned and walked out of the warehouse.
Outside, Alexander was leaning against the car, waiting.
When he saw her come out, he went to her and pulled her close.
"All done?" he asked.
Zoey nodded.
Alexander pressed his lips to her forehead.
Then he took out his phone and made a call.
"Go ahead."
Several men climbed out of a second car and walked into the warehouse without a word.
A moment later, Beatrice's screams and the sound of struggling carried through the walls.
Then silence.
---
Three days later.
Sovereign City Psychiatric Hospital.
Beatrice was locked in a private room. She wore a patient's gown, her hair loose and tangled, her body curled into the corner of the room.
Her eyes were vacant. She murmured to herself in a loop, the words soft and incoherent.
When the nurse brought her meals, she didn't eat. She just stared at the wall, repeating the same thing over and over — "I'm not Cleo. I'm Beatrice. You have the wrong person."
No one believed her.
She had lost her mind.
At least, that was what everyone agreed on.
---
In the director's office, Zoey stood at the window looking out over the enclosed outdoor yard below, ringed with chain-link fencing.
Alexander stood beside her.
"I've sent a team to the Viper organization's location," he said. "We've confirmed the base. This time, there's no way out for them."
Zoey nodded.
She watched the figures in patient's gowns moving around the yard below, and thought — without meaning to — of a time years ago when she had been confined to a place like this.
Not a psychiatric hospital. A prison. But the feeling was something close.
"Let's go." She turned from the window.
Alexander's arm settled around her waist, and they walked toward the door together.
At the threshold, Zoey stopped.
She looked back once.
Through the window, she could see Beatrice's room.
The stepsister who had once moved through the world like she owned it was curled up in the corner now, small and still, like a cat someone had put out and forgotten.
Zoey looked away and stepped outside.
The sun fell warm across her skin.
Alexander's hand closed around hers.
"Next up — the Viper organization."
Zoey nodded.
Yes.
The Viper organization was next.