Chapter 3 - Shadow of the Board
Z
The silence inside the penthouse was heavier than the winter air outside. Alessandro took a deep breath, his knuckles whitening as he gripped the edge of the bar.
"I found the debt documents three days ago," Alessandro said, his voice stripped of all its usual corporate authority. "My legal team was already working on a restructuring plan to absorb the liability under my personal holdings. You weren't supposed to find out like this."
"You mean you were going to leverage it," Victoria scoffed, leaning against the archway with an amused smirk. "Don't play the saint, Alessandro. You’re Vittorio's son. You don't solve problems with charity; you solve them with contracts."
"Get out of my home, Victoria. Now," Alessandro snarled. His voice carried the thunder of a man who ruled rooms filled with ruthless executives. "If you step foot near Elizabeth again, I will dump every share of Vance Holdings I own on the open market and bankrupt your father before breakfast."
Victoria’s smirk faded slightly, replaced by a cold, calculating glint. She smoothed her cashmere coat, picked up her gloves, and turned toward the foyer. "The board meets on Friday at nine, Alessandro. Make sure your little stray understands that in this city, bloodlines are business."
The heavy penthouse doors slammed shut.
I stood near the window, my arms wrapped tightly around myself. The city below looked vast, cold, and impossibly hostile. For eight years, I thought Daniel Mercer was the only monster I had to fear. I had believed that once the man who killed my parents was in chains, I could finally breathe.
I was wrong. Mercer was just a blunt weapon; these people were the architects of a gilded cage.
"Elizabeth," Alessandro murmured, walking toward me. He reached out to touch my arm, but I stepped back, putting distance between us.
"Don't," I said. "Did you really think you could manage me like an asset on a balance sheet? You knew my father's name was still tied to that stolen money."
"I was protecting you!" he insisted, his amber eyes blazing with desperate intensity. "The moment the press connects Elizabeth Hart to the Vitali name, every creditor and corrupt investor from New York to Zurich will come crawling out of the woodwork to claim a piece of your father's estate. I was building a legal shield around you before they could strike."
"By keeping me in the dark?" My voice rose, cracking with raw betrayal. "I spent almost a decade hiding who I was because of secrets. I won't raise my baby in a world built on more of them."
"This baby is a Vitali," Alessandro said fiercely, closing the distance despite my resistance and gently, but firmly, taking my wrists into his large hands. "And whether you want to admit it or not, the vultures are already circling. Arthur Vance wants control of the board. My cousins are already trying to contest my father's revised will. If they think you are weak, they will destroy you."
Before I could answer, my phone buzzed violently in my coat pocket.
I pulled my hands free from Alessandro’s grip and answered. "Liam?"
"Elizabeth, don't panic, but you need to get down to my apartment right now," Liam’s voice came through the speaker, breathy and laced with sheer panic.
"What happened?"
"Someone broke in. They tore the place apart," Liam whispered, the sound of sirens wailing in the background. "They didn't take the electronics, Elizabeth. They took the floorboards up under your old closet. They were looking for your mother's lockbox."
My heart plummeted into my stomach. "The lockbox? But there was nothing in there except old recipes and family photographs."
"No," Liam said, his voice dropping to a terrified hush. "There was a brass key taped beneath the false bottom. The lockbox was smashed open on the floor. The key is gone."
I dropped the phone to my side, the blood roaring in my ears. Alessandro was already watching me, his instincts instantly picking up on the shift in the room.
"What is it?" he demanded.
"Someone was in Liam’s apartment," I whispered, staring at the floor. "My mother gave me a brass key before she died. She told me it was for a safe deposit box at the First National Bank on Michigan Avenue, but when I checked years ago, the account was empty. I thought she was just confused from the medication."
Alessandro’s face drained of color. He turned toward the window, running a hand over his face.
"The First National Bank on Michigan Avenue," Alessandro repeated slowly. "That building wasn't just a bank, Elizabeth. It was the original headquarters of the Vitali-Hart Trust before the merger in 2005. The vault beneath it doesn't hold cash."
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"Then what does it hold?"
Alessandro turned back to look at me, his expression grim and haunted. "The real evidence that my father and yours gathered before they were executed. The evidence that Mercer didn't act alone."
