Chapter 55
Emily Windsor's POV
I saw the mockery in Lily's eyes. It wasn't simple hostility—it was the gleeful satisfaction of a predator toying with cornered prey.
"I..." My throat felt like sandpaper, alarm bells screaming in my skull.
I couldn't let her see any cracks.
Drawing a deep breath, I slowly lowered my frozen hand and forced myself to meet her gaze, burying the evidence Professor Douglas had shown me deep in my mind.
I didn't explain. Didn't panic. Just asked calmly, "What are you looking for?"
Lily clearly hadn't expected that response. The smirk on her face froze for a split second.
"This is the Victor family estate. My brother's study. Do I need a reason to be here?" She recovered quickly, arms crossing tighter, chin lifting with imperious disdain.
"Yes," I said, voice quiet but crystalline clear, "unless you're here for the same reason I am—worried about Luke."
The words landed like a stone tossed into still water, sending faint ripples through her icy composure.
"Worried about him?" Lily scoffed as if I'd told the world's worst joke. "Miss Windsor, you really do think too highly of yourself. Luke needs you to worry about him?"
"Of course not," I said, stepping out from behind the desk, closing the distance between us without an ounce of retreat. "He's used to carrying everything alone. Used to keeping everyone behind him, including you. But Lily, we both know what he's facing right now isn't ordinary corporate warfare—it's a family rotted to the core. He wants to cut out the infected flesh, and every parasite feeding on that rot is going to fight back with teeth and claws."
My gaze locked onto hers, steady and unwavering. "I don't want to be the woman who just stands safe behind his walls, waiting for him to come home bleeding so I can offer him comfort. I want to be inside with him, standing at his side. If that's what you want too, then we're here for the same reason tonight."
The mockery drained completely from Lily's face, replaced by something complex and unreadable.
She stared at me for a long time—long enough that I half-expected her to call security.
Instead, she simply turned on her heel. "Follow me," she said coldly.
---
I followed her down the hallway into a smaller study. The décor here was less austere than Luke's—touches of refined femininity softened the space—but it still radiated that same untouchable distance.
She unlocked a drawer and pulled out an encrypted drive, tossing it onto the desk.
"You want to help him?" She sank into the oversized leather chair, posture relaxed but eyes razor-sharp. "A lawyer who doesn't even know how deep the Victor empire runs?"
"Because I'm the only weapon he's willing to trust right now—and the only one he can use openly," I replied without hesitation.
Something flickered in Lily's gaze. She leaned back, long fingers drumming a slow rhythm on the desk.
"You know something, Emily," she began, her voice carrying a distant, mocking edge, "Luke and I—what we've hated most since childhood is this family. We hated the uncles who built fortunes on protection rackets and backroom casinos, hated the stench of blood money that would never wash off them. Our mother—this filthy empire killed her. She died hoping we could live clean, as far from this rot as possible."
A sadness I'd never seen before surfaced in her eyes—something raw and vulnerable beneath the ice.
"My brother hates it even more than I do. That's why he clawed his way to the top, fought for that seat—so he could one day tear out this poisoned tree by the roots and plant something new." Her gaze turned cold again. "You think he actually needs you for this? He's been preparing for this war for over a decade."
Her words stabbed through me, but they also cracked something open—the frozen doubt Professor Douglas's evidence had lodged in my chest.
"I still don't like you," Lily said bluntly, not bothering to hide her contempt. "You're still Luke's greatest weakness. And someday, I will find a way to remove you from his life—somewhere so far he'll never find you."
She paused, then a cold smile curved her lips. "But not now. Right now, those old bastards are more offensive. You want to cause them trouble? I'll help you."
She slid the encrypted drive across the desk toward me. "Everything in here—the Victor family's entire shadow empire. Account books, records, all of it. Luke never let you touch this because he didn't want to dirty your hands or drag you too deep where the mad dogs could reach you. He's always wanted to keep you in the cleanest corner he could carve out."
I stared at that small device, feeling its impossible weight.
Luke kept me away to protect me. The realization made my chest ache with a sweet, bitter pain.
"Now I'm giving it to you." Lily stood, looking down at me with that familiar hauteur. "Miss Windsor, let's see just how sharp this 'weapon' really is. Don't disappoint me—and don't disappoint my brother."
With that, she turned and walked out, leaving me alone.
---
I connected the drive to the computer right there in her study.
A torrent of data flooded the screen. Every crime I'd only read about in textbooks and case files now laid bare in raw, brutal detail.
Underground gambling rings. Loan sharking. Smuggling networks. Dock protection rackets.
Each folder represented an intricate web of profit, the lifeblood the Victor family's conservative faction had fed on for decades.
I forced down the surge of emotion and shifted into work mode. The lawyer in me took over, seeing nothing but cold data and legal patterns.
Line by line, I dissected the ledgers. The deeper I went, the tighter my frown became.
Something was wrong.
The Victor family's traditional illegal operations—their profits had been shrinking at a staggering rate over the past five years.
Take the South District gambling ring. Five years ago, annual profits topped tens of millions. Last year? Barely cracked five hundred thousand. Several months had even run at a loss.
I pulled up the cost analysis. Labor expenses, venue maintenance, and especially the payouts—hush money, bribes to various players—had skyrocketed.
Risk versus reward had become catastrophically lopsided.
It was exactly what Luke and Lily had said.
He was reforming. Using a slow, methodical strategy to strangle these operations—raising costs, squeezing margins, forcing the old guard to abandon their cash cows voluntarily.
But the process was too slow. Slow enough that those parasites had time to find new hosts—more profitable, more inhuman ventures.
Like human trafficking.