Chapter 22
My head shook when I read Elodie’s lie stamped in black and white lab report clean as hell, zerc traces of hCG, no pregnancy, nothing. Her pills were nothing but a mix of iron supplements and mild sedatives. Not even prescription strength. And her blood tests? All fucking normal. Nc illness. No dying timeline. No miracle cure. Just one full–blown circus act with me as the fucking
clown.
I stood in the corner of my private office, gripping the edges of the marble desk, trying not to destroy everything in sight. My knuckles were bleeding already from punching the drawer earlier I stared at the papers again, hoping I read it wrong. Hoping something made sense. But it didn’t.
“Elodie,” I called, voice low, rough. “Upstairs. Now.”
She walked in with that fake soft smile, wearing a silk robe and moving like she still had the right to breathe my air. I didn’t say a word at first. I tossed the papers to the floor in front of he and watched her go pale.
“What is this?” I asked, voice cracking under restraint. “Tell me. Because if one fucking word tha leaves your mouth doesn’t match what this says, I swear on my bloodline-‘
She dropped to her knees and grabbed the papers with trembling hands. “Harvick,” she whimpered. “I… I was scared. I didn’t want to lose you. I just… I just wanted you to love me. You weren’t looking at me anymore. You were slipping away. So I… I needed something to make you stay.”
“You faked a fucking baby to keep me in a lie?” I roared as I grabbed her arm and slammed he against the wall, just hard enough to make her feel the panic but not hard enough to break her. “You lied about dying. You lied about life growing inside you. You poisoned me, didn’t you? With those pills. You tried to fog my fucking head just so I wouldn’t look at her again. That was your plan? Seduce me while I was weak?”
She sobbed and clawed at my shirt. “I did it out of love, Harvick. I was desperate. She was stealing you even in death, and I-”
“Don’t say her name,” I snapped. “Don’t you ever say her name again. You don’t get to pu Danica’s name in that poison mouth of yours.”
She cried harder, but I was done. I let her go, took two steps back, and wiped her tears off my shirt with disgust.
“You’re not my wife anymore,” I said quietly, but each word cut like a blade. “You’re not anything to me now. You’re a stain I’m removing.”
She dropped to the floor again, crying louder, clinging to my leg like some sick scene from a fucking soap opera.
“Please, Harvick. Don’t do this. I can make it right. We can fix it. Please, I’ll do anything.”
I looked down at her, and for the first time, I didn’t feel rage or pity. I felt nothing. That was worse.
“I already called my lawyer,” I muttered. “Divorce papers are coming. You’ll sign them. And then you’ll get the fuck out.”
She screamed when I turned my back on her, but I didn’t stop walking. I slammed the bedroom door, locked it from the inside, and sat on the edge of the bed I once shared with a ghost.
Danica wasn’t haunting me.
She was hunting me.
Drinking alcohol while reading reports that screamed failure in every line made my blood boil hotter than the liquor in my throat. We were down fifty percent–fucking fifty–on every front tha mattered. Weapons, movement, black–market access. Half of my ports were dead zones, and the rest? Under surveillance. My empire, the one I bled for, was bleeding itself dry because of a ghost hiding behind a screen.
I crushed the bottle against the steel table and let the shards slice through my palm like it owed me something. Blood mixed with scotch. Still didn’t hurt as much as that fucking name flashing again and again in every intercept:
Silenc3r.
I was in the war room with my top five, and none of these bastards could look me in the eye.
“Any fucking update on Silenc3r?!” I growled, stepping into their line like a rabid dog hunting its own leash. “One name. One location. One single fucking shadow of him–have any of you ever earned your pay this month?”
Silence. Cowards.
One of them finally spoke, barely breathing. “Boss, no trace. No face. He’s… clean. And whoeve he is, he’s ten steps ahead. Always gone before we get there.”
I laughed, but it sounded like choking. Then I punched the metal wall behind me so hard it
dented and blood smeared over it.
“Then stop chasing ghosts and start tracking ghosts with patterns,” I barked. “No man moves without a code. He’s playing me like I’m his fucking puppet, and you’re all just standing here waiting to be burned.”
I sat back, but my leg was bouncing uncontrollably. My head spun with flashes of codes auctions, ports going cold, faces vanishing from deals, weapons sabotaged before arrival. Ther it hit me like a fucking freight train.
“Jeremiah,” I whispered, and everything went silent in my skull.
I stood up slowly, eyes burning like coals. “Jeremiah fucking Ferrante.”
I hadn’t said that name out loud in ten years. Not since he was disowned, not since he disappeared to the Philippines to chase some wild rebellion bullshit and turn his back on the family. I thought he was dead. I hoped he was.
But now? The auction night. His face under that mask. That voice. That fucking smug voice when he said;
“She’s mine now.”
I had wanted to shoot him right there. I should’ve.
I turned to my laptop and pulled up the burner archives. And like hell itself decided to pour
gasoline on my fury. My screen blinked alive.
Ping.
A message. From Silenc3r. It was short. Just a photo.
Jeremiah.
And Danica.
No, Aria.
Laughing. Close. Her hand on his chest. His arm around her waist. Somewhere remote, sunny, safe. My woman. My bloodline. My rage snapped in half.
I stood up and threw the laptop across the room, roaring like a goddamn beast as it shattered into pieces.
*JEREMIAH WAS SILENC3R!” I bellowed. “He fucking knew she was alive! He took her! He took everything. AND YOU IDIOTS LET HIM!”
Everyone backed away as I shoved over the war table, sent chairs flying, and kicked the wall until blood smeared it like paint. I slammed my fists on the reinforced window, staring out over the city I once owned.
My voice dropped to a whisper only hell could hear.
‘I swear to every devil that breathed me into this world, I will burn the earth to take her back. Or bury them both in it.”
