Chapter 6 - Vivian's Dangerous Secret
The woman looked like Serafina reflected through different glass.
Same dark eyes.
Same cheekbones.
Same stillness before speaking.
“My name is Elena.”
Serafina couldn't move.
“You're my sister?”
“Half sister.”
Elena looked at Nikolai.
“And I'm the reason your father created Protocol Seventeen.”
Nikolai raised his weapon.
Serafina stepped between them.
“No.”
Elena smiled sadly.
“You still protect people before you understand them.”
“Start talking.”
Elena explained.
Salvatore had loved another woman before Serafina's mother.
Elena was born eighteen months before Serafina.
When Salvatore's enemies discovered the child, he erased her existence and placed her with another family.
“Then why are you secondary heir?”
“Because I was his firstborn.”
Serafina absorbed the words.
“And Voss?”
“He knows.”
Elena had spent years infiltrating Adrian Voss's organization.
Voss believed Elena wanted the Moretti inheritance.
She had encouraged that belief.
“Why didn't you come to me?”
“Because anyone near you became a target.”
Dorian looked at her.
“Vivian?”
Elena's expression tightened.
“She works for Voss. But she's not what you think.”
Dorian laughed bitterly.
“I've heard enough versions of what Vivian is.”
“She was protecting someone.”
“Who?”
Elena hesitated.
“Her brother.”
Vivian's younger brother had disappeared three years earlier.
Voss held him in a private medical facility and used him to control Vivian.
Dorian sat down.
Everything he believed about the affair became uglier.
Not less wrong.
Just uglier.
Elena handed Serafina a flash drive.
“Voss has people inside your organization.”
Nikolai stiffened.
“Names?”
“One.”
“Who?”
Before Elena answered, gunfire erupted above.
Nikolai killed the cellar lights.
“Down!”
Bullets tore through the wooden floor.
Dorian pulled Serafina behind the stone desk.
Elena fired toward the staircase.
Rosa screamed.
Nikolai's men returned fire.
Then silence.
Footsteps retreated.
Nikolai sent two guards after them.
They returned minutes later.
“Gone.”
One carried a dropped phone.
Nikolai unlocked it.
A message was visible.
TARGET CONFIRMED. BOTH HEIRS PRESENT.
Below it was the sender.
Nikolai's face emptied.
Serafina noticed.
“Who?”
He turned the phone.
The message had come from Julian Cross.
Their family attorney.
The man who had known every clause in the trust.
Every safe house.
Every inheritance condition.
Serafina whispered, “Julian.”
Then her own phone rang.
Vivian.
Serafina answered.
No voice.
Only a live video.
Vivian sat tied to a chair.
Behind her stood Julian Cross.
May you like
He smiled into the camera.
And raised a gun.
