Chapter 2 - The Silent Surveillance
The night air outside Marco’s apartment was biting, but it felt like a relief compared to the suffocating rot inside my own home.
I sat in the dark, watching the city skyline like a predator perched on a branch.
Every minute that ticked by felt like a physical weight pressing on my lungs.
I thought about the maid.
Her name was Elara, I had recalled it only after staring at the personnel files for an hour.
She was young, barely twenty, and she had stood against Victoria with the ferocity of a lioness.
She had taken the blow—a heavy, wooden ruler strike—across her shoulder without so much as a whimper.
I reached for my phone.
“Marco,” I said when he answered.
“Boss, I have the surveillance logs you requested.”
I listened as he detailed the events he had gathered from the hidden cameras I had installed months ago—not for them, but for the enemies I knew were always hunting me.
I had been so focused on the shadows outside that I had failed to notice the snake in my own garden.
Victoria had been systematic.
She hadn't just been cruel; she had been training my children to fear me.
She had been whispering that I didn't love them.
That I only cared about money and blood.
That I was a monster who would eventually consume them just like I consumed my enemies.
“Keep recording,” I ordered. “I want every word, every gesture, every moment of abuse documented.”
“Boss, if we release this now—”
“We aren't releasing anything yet,” I cut him off.
“Victoria thinks she is playing a game of power,” I said.
“I am going to show her that she isn't even a player.”
I stood up and walked to the window.
The lights of the city shimmered below, indifferent to the storm brewing in my chest.
I thought about Sophia.
If she were here, she would have seen the darkness coming before I did.
She would have reached out, touched my arm, and told me that hate would only mirror the darkness I was trying to fight.
But Sophia was gone.
And Victoria was going to learn exactly what happens when you mistake a man’s restraint for weakness.
I pulled up the feed from the nursery.
Victoria was there again.
She was sitting on the edge of Lily’s bed, speaking in that soft, venomous whisper.
I watched, my jaw aching from the pressure.
She was telling my daughter that I would never return.
She was telling her that I had abandoned them for a new family.
I gripped the edge of the glass until my knuckles turned white.
She was trying to break them from the inside out.
She was trying to steal the only things in this world that made my life worth living.
“Marco,” I whispered into the phone.
“Prepare the legal team. I want full custody. I want her removed from the estate. And I want her isolated from every single person who could offer her a lifeline.”
“Understood,” Marco replied.
“And the maid?”
“Elara is safe, Boss. I have moved her to a secure location.”
“Keep her there,” I said.
“She is the only person who has shown my children love in the last year.”
“She is to be compensated. Heavily.”
I ended the call and leaned against the window.
The reflection looking back at me was not the man Sophia had loved.
It was a man carved from ice.
May you like
And for the first time in my life, I felt absolutely nothing but a cold, clear, and lethal purpose.
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