Chapter 100 100. He Is Alive
She deflated. "You're impossible."
"Say yes, Fiera."
"Fine," she gave up. "Do your Batman thing."
She started washing fruit. I plucked the knife from her hand and nudged her toward the couch. "You're not slicing anything with a concussion."
"I'm not sick-"
"You're injured. Humor me."
She rolled her eyes but went. I made a quick fruit salad, called down the hall to see if Maya wanted some. Her muffled "later" drifted back-she was buried in work.
While Camila ducked into Maya's room for a minute, I wiped my hands and called my hacker.
The voice that answered was distorted, same as it had been for five years. "Hayes."
I read the text out loud, gave him the short code and some other details. "Can you trace it?"
There was a pause, followed by faint typing.
"Nothing I can give you," he said eventually. "Whoever sent it knows what they're doing."
"Not good enough," I growled.
"That's all there is."
I hung up as Camila came back.
"My techie failed me."
She sat, taking the bowl I offered but didn't eat yet. "Maya and I were just thinking, what if it's Ronan trying to make me paranoid? Nadia's good with tech. She could send something untraceable just to screw with me."
"Interesting." Using love notes to divert suspicion. It was a reasonable theory. "But my money's on Damon."
Her head snapped up. "Damon?"
"He's the one who suggested the website, and now some stranger appears talking about building sites for writers? He's too perfect."
"Aww, someone's jealous."
"Bullshit." My nostrils flared. "Your Damon can't stand next to me. The fuck am I jealous for?"
"Well," her voice was firm, "I trust Damon. He's been nothing but kind. I refuse to believe he's behind this."
A low ringing filled the air.
"What's that?" Camila looked around, confused. I remained there while she followed the sound into her bedroom and returned later with the burner phone. It had stopped ringing now.
"Two missed calls. Must be Nadia. First one was at one PM," she slapped her hand across her face and shook her head. "Did we just miss two golden opportunities?"
"Simple," I grabbed her arm and led her to the couch. I stretched out on it too, pulled her feet into my lap, started kneading circles into her arches. "Call her back."
Three trials later, someone picked up.
"Hello?" Camila said cautiously.
I watched her face. The silence on the other end stretched. Then her eyes went wide.
"What?" I demanded.
She lowered the phone slowly, like it had just delivered a death sentence.
Her voice was barely a whisper. "Victor Hayes is alive."
I snatched the phone from her hand. "What the hell do you mean Victor's alive? Camila killed him."
Nadia's voice came through cold and clipped. "No. She didn't."
"Explain."
"I gave Ronan five years. Five years of my early twenties. Graduated university and went straight to work for him. Did everything he asked. He promised me we'd make it official. Promised he'd marry me. Now he's throwing me away for Victoria Taylor like I was nothing."
My patience thinned. "Spare me the tragic love story. What do you have?"
A sound between a scoff and a laugh escaped her. "You really are Don's son. Fine. I'll skip the feelings."
"I have evidence of every single thing Ronan's done for the last five years. Kept most of it as insurance in case he ever turned on me. Well, congratulations to him-he just activated it. If he thinks he can waste my life and dump me for some nepo baby, he thought wrong."
I put the phone on speaker. "Evidence like?"
"Everything. Financial records. Communications. Video and audio proof. Trafficking. Rape. Blackmail. The vehicular manslaughter setup. Hard drugs. Smuggling. Murder. Take your pick. It's enough for life without parole or the needle, depending on which country wants him first."
"And Victor Hayes?" I asked.
Silence hummed for a beat.
"He's been in our basement for the last eight months. Ronan kept him alive to torture him. Camila stabbed him, yes, but Ronan's team stabilized and moved him."
I looked at Camila. Her eyes were wet, chest rising and falling too fast. Relief and rage fought on her face-like someone had just lifted a boulder off her back and replaced it with a bomb.
"You didn't kill anyone," I told her quietly.
Her shoulders shook. She covered her mouth with her hand, a broken sound escaping as the weight of the word "killer" finally loosened its chokehold.
"What do you want for the evidence?"
"Three things. Ronan gets life imprisonment, you get me a new identity, and two million dollars cash."
"If you're handing over evidence, you were his accomplice. Police will track you down eventually."
"I'm not stupid," she snapped. "I'm not handing you anything that implicates me directly. Some of it I'll edit my tracks out of."
"If you can edit your tracks," I countered, "how do we know what you're giving us isn't fabricated?"
Silence. Then, "I'll send you an email within thirty minutes. You'll see for yourself. Also... don't ever call me. I'm always around Ronan so I decide when we talk. That's non-negotiable. He doesn't know I know about Victoria yet."
I didn't like it, but she was right.
"We understand," I said.
"Good. Watch your inbox." The call ended.
For a moment, the living room was silent. Camila stared at nothing, fingers now digging into her knees. I called Rafael.
"How fast can you build someone a new identity? Passport included."
He didn't even pretend to be surprised. "Depends on how clean they need to be. Three days minimum. Why?"
"Start making calls, and prepare three million in cash."
"I'll handle it."
When I hung up and turned to Camila, tears silently streamed down her face.
"Camila," I called softly. My hands returned to kneading the soft skin of her feet.
Her throat worked, but nothing came out.
Maya's room door opened and she appeared in the living room.
"Is everything okay?"
Before either of us could answer, my phone buzzed. A video message-dark body cam footage shot from Nadia's chest, most likely-from an unknown sender. That was fast.
The three of us crowded around the screen. Deep voices murmured in the background, then the camera panned to a woman being shoved onto an empty stretch of road. Sarah Mitchell. She looked beaten and could barely stand.
The men retreated into the bushes on both sides. One stayed visible long enough for the camera to catch the gun in his hand, aimed at Sarah to keep her in place.
Headlights appeared in the distance.
Camila's car. Then... Impact.
Sarah went down hard. Before Camila even stopped the car fully, the men rushed out, lifting Sarah's body and vanishing back into the trees.
Camila got out, searched frantically, called out for minutes. Then she got back in her car and drove away.
The timestamp jumped forward an hour. Same road but Sarah was back, forced to stand in the same spot. This time two men held guns on her openly.
Headlights again. Sarah tried to run, but the car hit her anyway. The men didn't carry her like before. The driver's door opened and Ronan stepped out.
We stared at the screen in silence.
Maya looked away first, hand clamped over her mouth, and bolted toward the bathroom. I heard the door slam, then retching.
Camila was frozen beside me, face drained of color.
"He killed someone," she whispered, "just to frame me. Just to force your hand over an inheritance."
I pulled her against my chest, cradling the back of her head. "He'll pay for this."
"I knew he'd killed before," she muffled against my shirt. "I knew he was capable of it. But watching it like this..."
Her fingers twisted into my shirt. We stayed like that, silent, mourning a woman we'd never met who died because she was convenient collateral.
Over her head, the frozen image of my brother stared back.
When did it get this bad? Was it Don? The contest? The way I let us both be sharpened into weapons? How much of this monster was my father's work, and how much was mine by omission?
"Lucien... have you ever killed someone?"
I pulled back immediately. "What?"
She was looking at me now with unwavering reddened eyes. There was fear there, yes, but also something like a plea. "Have you?"
"No." I confessed. "I've ruined companies. I've destroyed men on paper. I've pushed people to the edge of bankruptcy, maybe depression. But I've never taken a life. I'll never cross that line."
She studied my face for long, then nodded, like she'd already known but needed to hear it anyway.
Her next question cut just as deep.
"What about Catherine Moretti?"