I caught my husband kissing my older sister in my mother’s kitchen while twenty people celebrated my father’s sixty-fifth birthday in the next room. / Chapter 41 / 120

Chapter 41 - The Matriarch of Zurich

The ocean breeze outside the harbor felt suddenly like dry ice against my skin. The black screen of Liam’s satellite phone reflected our faces: my eyes wide and frozen in disbelief, Liam’s jaw locked into a granite ridge of unadulterated fury.

"He's alive," I whispered, the words scraping against the back of my throat like shards of glass. "Liam... that was Richard. I watched the marina burn. I saw the wreckage pulled from the harbor basin."

"He was extracted," Liam said, his voice dropping into that chilling, lethal cadence he used when operational discipline replaced human emotion. He tapped the touchscreen rapidly, trying to re-establish the tracing protocol. "The blast at the harbor wasn't an escape attempt. It was a planned demolition to fake his death. Victor Vance took the fall to draw our attention, to let Richard slip out through an international diplomatic corridor."

"And that woman..." My knees trembled, but I forced myself to stand tall against the wooden railing. "Who is she?"

"Margarethe von Berg," Liam answered without looking up. "The dowager matriarch of the Berg-Sovereign conglomerate. She doesn't just manage sovereign wealth funds; she launders bloodlines. For thirty years, intelligence agencies assumed she was a reclusive philanthropist living in the Swiss cantons. In reality, Victor Vance was nothing more than her field dog. A loud, expendable dog."

He shoved the phone back into his coat and grabbed my arm, his grip urgent and protective. "We need to get off this pier right now. If Margarethe reached out directly, it means she’s not hiding anymore. She’s moving into the open, and whenever she moves, bodies follow."

We ran up the weathered planks toward the black SUV waiting at the edge of the dunes. Behind us, Eleanor emerged from the passenger side, her face pale, wrapped in an oversized trench coat that hid the bandages from her recent escape. When she saw the sheer terror in my eyes, she froze.

"Maya? What happened?" Eleanor called out, her voice shaky. "Is Victor—"

"Victor is a pawn, Eleanor," I said, reaching her and gripping her trembling hands. "Richard didn't burn. He's sitting in an Alpine penthouse with the real owner of the Trust."

Eleanor stumbled backward against the door of the SUV, all color draining from her lips. "No... no, Richard told me... back when we were still in the city, before everything fell apart... he told me he had an insurance policy. He said if everything burned down, an 'Old God' in Zurich would give him a new name, a new face, and half the continent."

"She didn't give him a new face," Liam said coldly as he opened the doors and pushed us both inside. "She gave him an audience. And now, she wants the bluff."

As the engine roared to life and we tore down the coastal highway, my phone—my personal, private phone that only my father possessed—buzzed on the console.

A single text message lit up the screen: