2025-11-23 19:20:05The Mercedes moved through Queens but Marcus barely noticed. His mind was still processing Victor's words, turning them over like puzzle pieces.
“Daniel, my brother, seduced my wife”.
"Where are we going?" Marcus asked.
"Somewhere private," Victor replied, his eyes on the road. "Somewhere we can talk without interruption. Your father owns a building in Tribeca. He uses it for... sensitive meetings."
"Does he know you're taking me there?"
Victor's lips curved in something that wasn't quite a smile.
"He knows I found you five years ago, Young Master. He ordered me to watch but not interfere. What he doesn't know is that I've been compiling my own records of everything that's happened to you against…”.
Marcus looked at Victor in the rearview mirror. "Against what?"
"Against..." Victor paused, choosing his words carefully. "Against the possibility that you might need leverage against your own family."
"Why?" Marcus asked. "You're loyal to my father. You've served him for thirty years."
"I'm loyal to the Chen family," Victor corrected. "Robert Chen is... what he is. Brilliant, ruthless. But he's also getting old and he's forgotten something important."
"What's that?"
Victor met Marcus's eyes in the mirror. "That empires built only on fear will eventually collapse . You understood that five years ago when you left and you wanted to build something different."
He returned his attention to the road. "I thought you were naive then. Maybe you were. But after watching what your father and Daniel did to you... I think maybe you were right"
The Mercedes turned down a narrow street in Tribeca, pulling into an underground garage beneath a nondescript office building. Victor swiped a keycard, and a reinforced gate opened automatically.
The garage contains just a handful of expensive cars parked in designated spots. A Bentley. A Porsche. And a Range Rover with tinted windows.
Victor parked in a spot marked "Reserved" and turned off the engine.
"Before we go up, I need to ask you something, Young Master. What are you hoping to find in the information I've gathered?"
Marcus considered the question. "The truth."
"The truth." Victor turned in his seat to face Marcus directly. "And what will you do with it? Will you use it to hurt the people who hurt you? Or will you expose and destroy them? Or will you use it to protect yourself and walk away again?"
"I don't know yet," Marcus admitted.
Victor nodded slowly. "That's an honest answer. Good. Hold onto that as you learn what I'm about to show you. Because the information I have... it's going to make you angry. Angrier than you've ever been. And anger makes men do things they regret."
"I'll be fine."
"Will you?" Victor's gaze was penetrating. "Five years ago, you left because you didn't want to become your father. You didn't want to build your life on cruelty. But now you're back and you're ready to strike back. That's the exact moment when men become the things they hate."
"I'm not my father."
"No," Victor agreed. "You're not. But you could be.I trained you, remember? I know what you're capable of”.
He opened his door. "Come on. Let's see if you can still be yourself after learning what your family did to you."
They took an elevator to the tenth floor. Their footsteps echoed on the floor as Victor led Marcus down a corridor lined with frosted glass doors. At the end of the hall, Victor unlocked a door marked with a number: 1047.
Inside was a conference room that looked like a law firm or a consulting company. A long mahogany table was at the center, surrounded by leather chairs.
Victor closed the door behind them and locked it.
"I told you I've been watching you. This is what I've compiled”.
He walked to a cabinet and pulled out two thick folders, putting them on the conference table.
"These are the condensed versions. Financial records, surveillance reports, intercepted communications. Everything you need to understand what was done to you, and by whom."
Marcus approached the wall slowly. The photos were arranged chronologically, starting from five years ago. There he was, younger, smiling, holding Victoria's hand at their small wedding ceremony.
They'd been happy then. Or he thought they had been.
The next section showed photos of him at Bradford Industries, sitting in a cubicle, carrying coffee, enduring meetings where he was clearly being ignored.
"Who took these?" Marcus asked.
"Some I took myself," Victor admitted. "Others came from security cameras, private investigators, and social media”.
Further along the wall, Marcus was at the Bradford mansion looking isolated and alone at a family dinner. Victoria and Daniel—still calling himself Dylan Kane then—were acting intimate in a restaurant.
"When did it start?" Marcus asked. "The affair. When?"
Victor consulted a note pinned beneath a photo.
"Three years and two months ago. They met at a charity gala, the one the Bradfords attended regularly. Daniel introduced himself as Dylan Kane, a tech entrepreneur. Within two weeks, they were having lunch together. Within a month..." He didn't finish the sentence.
Marcus stared at a photo of Victoria and Daniel kissing outside a hotel. The timestamp showed it was taken in the afternoon, probably while Marcus was at Bradford Industries, performing whatever meaningless task they'd assigned him that day.
"Did she love him?" Marcus asked. "Or was she just... looking for a way out?"
"Does it matter?"
Marcus thought about that. "No. I suppose it doesn't."
He moved to the next section of the wall.
"The Bradford family finances," Victor explained, joining Marcus at the wall. "This took me three years to fully map out. They're very good at hiding their problems behind shell companies and creative accounting."
"How bad is it?" Marcus asked.
"Catastrophic." Victor pulled down a document and handed it to Marcus. "Bradford Industries is forty-seven million dollars in debt. The company looks profitable on paper, but that's all smoke and mirrors. They've been taking loans from various sources to maintain the appearance of success while slowly bleeding out."
Marcus scanned the document.
"How are they still operating?"
"Because someone has been keeping them afloat. Look here." Victor pointed to a series of transactions highlighted in yellow. "These are loans from shell companies, all owned by the same person."
Marcus felt ice form in his chest.
"My father."
"Your father," Victor confirmed. "Robert has been deliberately destroying them, Marcus. He bought up their debt, then used it as leverage to squeeze them harder. Every time they tried to recover, he'd offer them just enough money to survive. He's been playing with them like a cat with a mouse."
"Why?" Marcus asked, though part of him already knew the answer.
"To punish you through them. To make your 'normal life' as miserable as possible and to prove that you can't escape the world you were born into."
Victor's expression was grim.
"This was his way of forcing you home, destroying everything you tried to build until you had nowhere else to go."
Marcus set down the document, fighting the rage building in his chest. "And the Bradfords? Do they know who actually owns their debt?"
"No. The shell companies are buried under layers of corporate structure. But recently..." Victor pulled down another document. "Recently, they've started to suspect something is wrong. They're desperate, Marcus. Which makes them dangerous."
"What do you mean?"
Victor walked to the conference table and opened one of the thick folders. He pulled out a stack of papers and spread them across the mahogany surface.
"These are documents prepared by the Bradfords' lawyers. Backdated transactions. Forged signatures. Financial records that show you embezzling five million dollars from Bradford Industries."
Marcus picked up one of the papers, gazing at his signature, or a very good forgery of his signature at the bottom.
"They're going to frame me."
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Chapter 160
Marcus smiled faintly, his eyes focused on the edge of the blade."My grandfather had a small sawmill in the Black Forest," he said. "Before the war. He did not like circular saws. He said they tore the grain and made the timber weep sap. He built barns with hand tools, mortise and tenon, oak pegs and adzes.""How old were you?""Twelve," Marcus said. "I spent three summers turning square billets into octagonal pegs just like this. He paid me five pfennigs for every hundred pegs that fit the gauge.""Did he beat you if they were too small?""He did not beat me," Marcus said. "He just threw the small ones into the wood stove. If I spent all day making sixty pegs and thirty of them burned in the stove, I learned very quickly how to measure with my fingers."Elena touched the side of one of the finished pegs. It was smooth as bone, cool to the touch, smelling fa
Chapter 159
Marcus dropped the hammer and the chisel onto the scaffold planks. He seized the pine log with both hands, threw his weight against it, and shoved it sideways.The timber slipped past the cut stone. It dropped into the bottom of the pocket with a solid, final CRACK that shook the entire wall.The derrick relaxed. The tension left the rope.Elena let the rope fall from her hands. She slumped back against the oak post, letting her head drop back. She was breathing hard, her shoulders trembling with fatigue.Marcus stood on the scaffold, looking down at the timber. It sat three inches deep in the granite bed, seated as firm as if it had grown there.He let out a long breath through his nose. He picked up his hammer and chisel and slid them back into his belt."Good pull," he said down to her.She looked up at him through her messy hair. A sl
Chapter 158
By the time the second purlin was pinned with a temporary wedge, the sun was high in the sky. The white fog had completely burned away from the valley, leaving the mountain slopes clear and green below them. Far down on the floor of the valley, the gray ribbon of the river sparkled in the noon light.Elena dropped the rope and sat down on a stone near the door. Her hands were red from the hemp rope, despite the calluses."We eat now," she said. It was not a question."Yes," Marcus agreed, climbing down from the scaffold. "We eat."They went into the kitchen. Elena cut thick wedges of cheese and the rest of the sourdough loaf. She reached into a clay jar on the shelf and pulled out a handful of cured black olives that were small, bitter, and slick with oil.They took the food outside and sat on the flat terrace wall, letting their legs hang over the drop.The
Chapter 157
Marcus woke before the sun. The room was dark, but the iron fireback still gave off a low, gentle heat. Through the open roof, the silver band of stars was fading into a cool gray mist.Beside him, Elena was sleeping on her side. Her breathing was deep and even. In the safe houses, she had slept like a dog in an alley, twitching at every noise in the street. Here, her hands were relaxed and open on the wool blanket.Marcus slid out from under the blanket without making a sound. The terracotta floor was cold against his bare feet. He pulled on his heavy canvas trousers, his wool socks, and his leather boots. He did not lace the boots to the top. He walked quietly across the room to the hearth.A few red embers still glowed under the gray ash. Marcus picked up the iron poker and pulled the red coals together into a small mound. He took a handful of dry pine shavings from the wood box and dropped them on top. He knelt down and blew softly into the ash.The shavings smoked for a second, t
Chapter 156
Marcus went into the trees and returned with three long Scots pine poles they had cut and peeled three days ago. They were six inches thick at the base, straight and strong.He laid two of the poles on the ground, crossing them near the top to form a tall 'A' frame. He used the heavy galvanized steel wire to lash the tops together, wrapping the wire around the wood twenty times and twisting the ends tight with a pair of heavy pliers.At the apex where the poles crossed, he hung the heavy iron block-and-tackle. He threaded the thick hemp rope through the iron pulleys."A simple shear-leg derrick," Marcus explained. "We raise the legs against the inside wall. We tie the back leg to an anchor stone on the terrace. Then we use the mechanical advantage of the double pulley. One person can pull fifty kilos and lift two hundred.""I can pull fifty kilos," Elena said."I know you can," M
Chapter 155
From far down the mountain, muffled by the thick pine trees, came the deep, grinding whine of a heavy diesel truck in low gear. The sound grew louder, punctuated by the sharp hiss of pneumatic air brakes as the driver took the lower hairpin turn.Marcus climbed down the ladder. He walked to the edge of the terrace and stood beside Elena.A few minutes later, the massive green truck crested the final rise of the dirt track. It moved slowly, rocking from side to side like a ship in rough water. Its massive knobby tires churned through the loose limestone gravel. Behind it, the long flatbed trailer trailed along, carrying the stacks of clay tiles tied down with wide blue ratchet straps.On the bed of the truck lay the sixty chestnut rafters, their pale, freshly sawn ends glowing white in the sun, and the four massive Douglas fir purlins.The driver stopped the truck in the center of the wide clearing un
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