Chapter 4 - Confession in the Dark
The east wing guest suite smelled of expensive French perfume and lingering panic.
When I unlocked the heavy oak door and stepped inside, Vivian was sitting on the edge of the velvet chaise lounge. Her makeup was slightly smeared, her designer dress wrinkled from hours of pacing, but the moment she saw me, her signature icy smirk returned to her lips.
"Well, well. Look who decided to visit the maid's quarters," Vivian purred, crossing her legs and looking up at me with absolute disdain. "Did you finally tuck your little stray dog back into bed, Alejandro? Or did you realize that keeping a traumatized amnesiac around is going to ruin your social standing?"
I didn't answer right away. I walked slowly across the room, closing the door behind me with a soft, deliberate click. I stood over her, towering above her seated figure, my hands shoved deep into my pockets to keep from wrapping them around her throat.
"The federal marshals are thirty minutes away, Vivian," I said quietly. "They have your laptop. They have your financial transfers to Victor Vance. They have the architectural blueprints of the New Jersey port you downloaded from my mainframe."
Vivian’s smirk faltered for a split second, but she quickly recovered, tossing her head back with a haughty laugh.
"You think a few corporate spreadsheets and some bitter accusations are going to put me away?" she scoffed. "My brother is on a private jet over the Atlantic right now. By morning, he’ll have total control of your shipping routes. Castillo Enterprises will be a corporate carcass, and you'll be too busy defending yourself against federal felony indictments to even remember my name."
"You really believe that, don't you?" I asked, my voice dangerously calm. "You think Victor Vance cares about you? He left you behind the moment our accounts froze. He didn't warn you, he didn't send a car, and he certainly didn't leave you a parachute."
Vivian’s eyes flashed with genuine anger. "You're lying. Victor and I have an agreement—"
"Victor has an agreement with himself," I interrupted, pulling my phone from my pocket and tapping the speaker icon.
A recorded audio file began to play in the quiet room.
“...drop her,” a cold, clipped voice echoed through the speaker—unmistakably Victor Vance speaking to an unknown associate on an encrypted satellite line twenty minutes ago. “If the federal investigators trace those port access codes back to her laptop in the Castillo mansion, cut all ties immediately. Deny any familial relationship. Let her take the fall for the industrial sabotage. She was always too reckless anyway.”
The color drained entirely from Vivian’s face. She stared at my phone as if it were a venomous snake, her lips parting in silent, disbelieving horror.
"No..." she whispered, shaking her head frantically. "No, that's... that's edited. He wouldn't... we're family!"
"Family in the corporate world is just a synonym for disposable inventory," I said, leaning down so my face was inches from hers. "You spent three years breaking my wife's spirit, locking her in a basement, making her scrub the floors of the home she built with me. And for what? So Victor could hand you a prison sentence and a pair of handcuffs as a parting gift."
Vivian began to tremble, her hands clawing desperately at the silk cushions of the sofa. The impenetrable armor of arrogance she had worn for years finally cracked, splintering into jagged pieces of raw, unadulterated terror.
"Please..." she choked out, her voice breaking as she reached up to grab my sleeve. "Alejandro... please, don't let them take me to prison. I'll tell you everything. I'll give you the encryption keys to Meridian's private servers. I'll sign over my shares of—"
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I gently, but firmly, pulled my sleeve from her desperate grip.
"You don't have anything left to bargain with, Vivian," I said, turning my back on her as the distant wail of police sirens began to echo through the quiet suburban night. "Your time in this house is officially over."
