Chapter 68 - The Mother's Confession
The guests began to murmur, then to whisper, and within seconds, horrified panic swept through the elite crowd like wildfire. Billionaires and foreign dignitaries started backing away from the stage, murmuring among themselves, while several foreign ambassadors immediately signaled their security details to evacuate.
Victoria didn't run.
She set her champagne flute down on the mahogany podium with agonizing precision. Her face had shed every trace of maternal warmth, leaving behind only the cold, terrifying visage of the monster who had ruled our family with an iron fist.
"You always were the most inconvenient child, Maya," Victoria said, stepping away from the microphone as her personal bodyguards drew their weapons, forming a defensive ring around her. "Eleanor had beauty, but she had a soft heart. She cried when she had to kiss that pathetic excuse of a man Julian in my kitchen. But you? You had your father’s stubborn, pathetic sense of righteousness."
"You poisoned him," I said, walking slowly up the steps to the stage, stopping ten paces from her guards. Liam appeared on the balcony above, his suppressed rifle leveled squarely at the captain of Victoria's security detail. The guards froze, realizing they were covered from high ground.
"I didn't poison him," Victoria sneered, her voice dropping into a venomous hiss. "I euthanized an obsolete asset. Your father wanted to give the entire trust to charity! He wanted to dissolve forty years of shadow banking because he found God in his sixties! Did he really think I would let him throw away an empire to clear his guilty conscience?"
"So you replaced him with an actor," Eleanor sobbed from her chair, looking at our mother with horror. "You made me smile at a stranger on his birthday... you told me Father was recovering in Zurich!"
"He was an obstacle!" Victoria snapped, turning violently toward Eleanor. "Just like you became an obstacle! Both of you were born to serve this dynasty! And what did you give me? Betrayal! Disobedience!"
"No, Victoria," I said, my voice quiet, carrying the weight of all the suffering, the sleepless nights, and the shattered trust that had defined my life since that fateful kitchen doorway. "We didn't betray you. You never had us. You built a house out of lies, and now it’s burning down."
Sirens began to wail in the distance—dozens of them, echoing off the skyscrapers of the city below, closing in on the Grand Metropole from every direction.
Victoria’s eyes narrowed into slits of pure malice. "You think a few federal warrants can touch me? I own the judges. I own the port authorities. I own this entire coast."
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"You did," Liam called down from the balcony, his voice ringing with cold authority. "Until twelve minutes ago. Your Swiss accounts are frozen. The Blackwater Spire has been seized by Zurich federal police. You don't own anything anymore, Victoria. You’re just an old woman with a gun."
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