Chapter 6 - The Woman They Could Use Against Him
My father was safe.
Marco had security reach him before Victor did.
But Victor wanted me to know he could reach Milwaukee.
He sent a photograph of Brooks Family Bakery.
The building had been empty for months.
A FOR LEASE sign still hung in the window.
Seeing it hurt more than I expected.
Victor’s message underneath contained only one sentence.
EVERYONE HAS SOMETHING THEY CANNOT AFFORD TO LOSE.
I stared at it.
Then something clicked.
Victor thought the bakery represented weakness.
He did not understand what it actually represented.
Failure.
Survival.
And the fact that I had already lost almost everything once and kept going.
“He wants me frightened,” I said.
Adrian stood beside me.
“He wants me frightened.”
“Then he's succeeding with one of us.”
I looked at him.
“You.”
He did not deny it.
For the first time, I took his hand.
“You can't control every terrible thing that might happen.”
“I can try.”
“And spend your entire life waiting for the next funeral?”
His fingers tightened around mine.
“Elena.”
“I’m still here.”
That night Marco discovered Victor had returned to Chicago.
He was preparing to flee permanently.
But before leaving, he intended to destroy Adrian’s reputation, businesses, and alliances by releasing fabricated financial evidence mixed with genuine records.
Victor’s final weapon was not violence.
It was chaos.
And the only proof exposing his manipulation was hidden in the original server equipment from the warehouse.
Marco recovered it.
Victor realized what had happened.
Then the mansion lost power again.
This time, we knew immediately it was deliberate.
Backup generators failed.
Phones lost signal.
A fire alarm sounded in the west wing.
Security divided.
Exactly what Victor wanted.
Winston began growling.
I remembered the first garden incident.
Dogs did not understand financial conspiracies.
They understood smell.
“Adrian.”
He turned.
“Winston knew someone was outside before security did.”
The terrier pulled toward the service corridor.
Marco followed.
Behind an old pantry door, they discovered a man attempting to disable the mansion’s internal network.
He was arrested.
But Victor was already inside.
A gunshot sounded from downstairs.
Then another.
Adrian pushed me into the secure room.
“Stay here.”
The door closed.
Locked.
For thirty seconds, I obeyed.
Then I noticed Winston was missing.
Again.
“You have got to be kidding me.”
I heard barking through the ventilation corridor.
Then shouting.
Then silence.
The secure door suddenly unlocked.
Claire stood outside.
“Move.”
We ran toward the kitchen.
Smoke drifted through the corridor from a small electrical fire.
Marco’s men were moving toward the courtyard.
And through the kitchen windows, I saw Adrian.
Victor stood across from him.
Winston barked furiously behind a steel table.
Victor had nowhere left to run.
Police sirens approached beyond the estate walls.
Victor shouted something I could not hear.
Adrian remained perfectly still.
Then Victor looked toward the kitchen.
Toward me.
That was his final mistake.
His attention shifted for less than a second.
Marco’s team moved.
Victor was disarmed and forced to the ground.
Nobody died.
No heroic gunfight.
No revenge execution.
Just a frightened, furious man finally running out of places to hide.
As police vehicles filled the driveway, Adrian walked directly toward me.
“You left the secure room.”
“Technically Claire opened it.”
“Elena.”
“Also Winston left first.”
His eyes closed briefly.
“You are impossible.”
“You laughed at me six days after meeting me. You knew what you were getting.”
He looked at me.
Then something extraordinary happened.
Adrian Moretti smiled.
Not because Winston had done something ridiculous.
Not because I had surprised him.
Simply because he wanted to.
But the story was not over.
Victor’s arrest forced Adrian to confront everything he had buried for nine years.
May you like
And the decision he made afterward shocked everyone who knew the Moretti name.
Including me.
