Chapter 19 - VICTOR'S LAST MOVE
Victor did not come for Fern.
He came for me.
Daniel woke from surgery long enough to whisper, “He always punishes the witness.”
I was the daughter of the man who kept the ledger.
The woman who carried Stellan’s child.
To Victor, I was two generations of unfinished business.
We moved to a police safe house.
Stellan hated it.
I loved the cheap couch and ordinary locks.
For the first time, nothing around me belonged to the Cross family.
At midnight, the power went out.
Stellan reached for me in the dark.
“Stay behind me.”
A window broke downstairs.
Police shouted.
Then Victor’s voice came from the hallway.
“Anthony’s boy.”
Stellan pushed me into the bathroom and closed the door.
I heard a struggle.
A gunshot.
Silence.
I opened the door despite every order I had ever been given.
Victor stood at the end of the hall with a gun against Stellan’s side.
Stellan was bleeding from the shoulder.
Victor smiled at me.
“You look like Daniel.”
“Good.”
“He was weak.”
“He survived you.”
Victor’s smile vanished.
He pointed the gun at me.
Stellan moved.
The shot went into the ceiling.
They crashed into the wall.
I saw the gun slide across the floor.
I kicked it under a cabinet.
Victor reached for a knife.
Before he could use it, police entered from the stairwell.
“DROP IT!”
Victor looked around.
No exit.
No hostage.
No empire.
He dropped the knife.
The great Victor Cross was arrested barefoot in a rented suburban hallway.
Three months later, federal indictments hit everyone connected to the old network.
Victor. Malcolm. Wynn. Judges. Accountants. Security contractors.
Stellan testified.
So did my father.
So did Celeste.
Then the prosecutors came to me with one last document.
A restitution schedule built from seized Cross assets.
At the top was my name.
Amount: $18.4 million.
I stared at it.
“I don’t want his money.”
The prosecutor shook her head.
“It isn’t Stellan’s.”
May you like
She turned the page.
“It was your father’s.”
