Chapter 3 - SINS OF THE FATHER
The silver pocket watch dangled from Elena’s bruised hand, spinning slowly on its broken chain.
For a man who controlled the city’s underground with ruthless precision, Marcus Conor suddenly looked like a mortal who had just taken a bullet to the chest. He reached out with a trembling, gloved hand and took the watch. He traced the dent on the silver casing—the exact spot where a bullet had struck his wife two decades ago.
"Where did you get this?" Marcus asked. His voice was no longer a rumble. It was a razor.
Julian was hyperventilating, his back pressed hard against the wall. "I… I bought it! At an auction! An estate sale in Geneva, I swear to God!"
"Liar," Elena spat, finding a fierce, sudden strength in the presence of her father’s army. She looked at her husband with absolute disgust. "I saw the appraisal documents in your study. It wasn’t bought. It was given to you. By her."
Elena pointed a shaking finger up the stairs at Eleanor.
The matriarch’s haughty expression finally cracked. Her meticulously painted lips parted in shock, not because of the accusation, but because of the sheer hatred in her daughter-in-law's eyes.
"Julian, you fool," Eleanor hissed, gripping the banister. "I told you to melt that cursed thing down!"
Marcus slowly closed his fist around the watch. The silence in the room grew so dense it felt suffocating. He didn't order his men to fire. Instead, he took two slow, measured steps toward the grand staircase.
"Twenty years," Marcus said softly, looking up at Eleanor. "I hunted the men who ambushed my wife’s car for twenty years. I burned down safehouses. I buried bosses. And you… a socialite from a dying shipping family… you had her watch?"
"She owed us!" Eleanor screamed, the veneer of high society completely washing away, revealing the desperate, vicious woman beneath. "Your cartel drove my husband’s shipping company into the ground! You took our livelihood! I took the only thing that mattered to you!"
The revelation hit Elena like a physical blow. She clutched her swollen stomach, a sharp cramp radiating through her abdomen. Julian hadn’t married her by accident. The abuse, the isolation, the constant belittling—it wasn't just cruel arrogance. It was a calculated, generational vengeance. They knew exactly who she was.
"You knew," Elena whispered, staring at Julian. "You knew who my father was all along."
Julian looked away, tears of cowardice spilling down his cheeks. "My mother made me do it, Clara… Elena. The cartel… the rival families… they paid us to keep you close. To make sure the baby didn't survive."
The words hung in the air like poison. To ensure the baby didn't survive.
Marcus raised his hand. The tactical guards immediately lowered their weapons, stepping back to form a perimeter. Death was too quick for this.
Before Marcus could speak, the heavy oak doors of the mansion—already splintered from the breach—were violently kicked completely off their hinges.
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A new group of men poured into the foyer. But these weren't Marcus’s men. They wore no uniforms, carried heavy, unregistered weapons, and bore the crude tattoos of the very rival cartel Julian had just mentioned.
The man leading them smiled, holding a detonator. "Well," the cartel boss laughed, "isn't this a beautiful family reunion?"
