Chapter 8
The garden became a war without bullets.
Federal agents flooded the property.
Men who had frightened judges and bought officers suddenly raised their hands like schoolboys.
Victor tried to claim it was a family misunderstanding.
Then Grace played the greenhouse recording.
Elena should have stayed quiet.
She was a problem.
That is why she had to go.
Victor stopped talking.
Leo stood beside me wrapped in Sofia’s jacket.
His face was pale, but his eyes were open.
He had heard the truth.
Too much truth.
I crouched before him.
“I’m sorry.”
He looked at the greenhouse.
“Mom left the camera?”
“I think so.”
“She helped us?”
My throat tightened.
“Yes.”
Leo nodded slowly.
“Then I’m not scared of this place anymore.”
I pulled him into my arms.
But I was scared.
Not of the council.
Not of Victor.
Of what came next.
Because truth in my world never arrived alone.
It brought old blood with it.
By noon, the estate was sealed.
Javier, Victor, Russo, and six others were taken away.
The FBI agent in charge, Mara Quinn, sat across from me in the dining room.
“We need full cooperation,” she said.
“You have it.”
“That means records. Accounts. Names. Your father’s files.”
“My father is dead.”
“His crimes aren’t.”
I looked toward Leo, sleeping on the sofa under Sofia’s watch.
“If I cooperate, my son is protected?”
“If you don’t,” Agent Quinn said, “he’ll never be safe.”
That was the first honest thing anyone in authority had said to me all day.
So I opened the vault.
Not the money vault.
The family vault.
Ledgers.
Drives.
Photos.
Secrets men had killed to keep.
At the bottom sat a sealed envelope in Elena’s handwriting.
For Dante, when he is ready to choose our son over the throne.
I opened it.
May you like
Inside was one sentence.
Burn the crown before it burns Leo.
