Chapter 8 - THE PRICE OF MARBLE
I didn't let the medic give me painkillers. I needed the pain to keep me sharp. He stitched my shoulder and bound it tightly in a sling while I sat at my desk, staring at the bloodstained ledger Silas had brought me earlier.
When the medic left, Silas dragged Evelyn into the study. She was no longer crying. She looked like a ghost who had already accepted she was dead. She saw my arm in the sling and the blood on my shirt.
"The Russos failed," I said simply. "All of them are dead on my kitchen floor."
Evelyn collapsed to her knees. "Victor... please."
"I told you I was going to let Silas handle you," I said, standing up slowly. I walked around the desk, standing over her. "But I've changed my mind."
She looked up, a glimmer of desperate hope in her eyes. "You're going to let me live?"
"I'm going to let you repay your debt." I pulled the original threshold request from my pocket—the one stamped DENIED. I dropped it on the floor in front of her. "You stole eighty thousand dollars from my household. You are going to work off every single penny."
She blinked in confusion. "I... I can work. I'll pay you back. I'll do anything."
"Yes, you will," I said coldly. "But not here. Silas is putting you on a plane to our manufacturing plant in Macau. You're going to sew counterfeit handbags on an assembly line for fourteen hours a day until the eighty thousand is repaid. With interest. It should take you about... twenty years."
Evelyn screamed, lunging forward to grab my legs, but Silas caught her by the hair, hauling her backward.
"Get her out of my sight," I disgusted. "And Silas? Make sure she walks out through the staff entrance."
As Silas dragged her screaming from the room, I sank back into my chair, exhausted. The immediate threat was neutralized. The traitor was gone. But as I looked around the opulent, blood-soaked walls of my empire, I realized something terrifying.
I had built a fortress of marble and gold, but it was a tomb. And I had almost dragged an innocent woman and her child into the grave with me.
The next morning, I drove to the downtown penthouse. The city was waking up, the sun reflecting off the glass skyscrapers. I took the private elevator to the top floor.
Anna was sitting on the velvet sofa, drinking tea. She looked exhausted, her eyes rimmed with red. When she saw me, she stood up immediately.
"Sit down, Anna," I said gently, taking a seat in the armchair opposite her. "I'm not here as your boss today."
"How is your shoulder?" she asked softly.
"It will heal." I pulled an envelope from my jacket and placed it on the coffee table. "There's five hundred thousand dollars in there. Clean money. Untraceable. And a pair of first-class tickets to Switzerland. I have a contact at a pediatric orthopedic clinic in Geneva. They are the best in the world. They can fix Lily's leg. Properly. No more braces."
Anna stared at the envelope, then at me, tears welling in her eyes. "You're sending us away?"
"I am a dangerous man, Anna. Last night proved that. My world is violence and blood. You and Lily... you are light. I can't let my darkness swallow you."
Anna didn't touch the envelope. She looked at me, her gaze piercing right through the armor I had worn for a decade. "You took a bullet for us, Victor. You ripped a metal pipe out of a wall with your bare hands to save my daughter. A dark man doesn't do that."
"You don't know the things I've done."
May you like
"I know what you did last night," she whispered. She reached across the table, bypassing the money, and placed her hand over mine. "We aren't running. Not from you."
---
