Chapter 11 - The Confession in the Dark
"You shouldn't have opened that, Boss," Viktor said, his voice completely devoid of its usual warmth.
He didn't rush. He didn't drop the silver tray. He simply set it down on the edge of the mahogany desk, his right hand slipping casually inside the jacket of his bespoke suit—right where the Sig Sauer P226 rested against his ribs.
I didn't reach for my gun. I kept my eyes locked on his, feeling the cold, familiar rush of adrenaline that had kept me alive in a hundred dark alleys.
"How long, Viktor?" I asked, my voice terrifyingly calm. "How long did you know Eleanor was alive?"
Viktor let out a slow, heavy breath, leaning his hip against the corner of the bookshelf. "Since the night of the river, Charles. Your father didn't order her killed. He ordered her hidden. He knew the commission was coming for the family, and he knew your mother’s gift skipped you and passed directly to your sister. A boy who can heal broken bodies with a touch is the most dangerous weapon on earth in the hands of the underworld."
"And you let me spend twenty years believing she was dead?" I snarled, the rage bubbling up from my stomach, hot and lethal. "You let me rot in a wheelchair, believing I was the last of my blood?"
"Your father paid me to keep you in the dark, Charles," Viktor said steadily, his gaze unflinching. "And when the sniper put a bullet through your spine four years ago, I didn't call the best surgeons in Zurich to heal you. I kept you in that chair because as long as Charles Whitmore was crippled, the commission left you alone. You were harmless. You were an old lion in a cage."
"Until Leo walked into the ballroom," I whispered, standing up from my chair. My legs held firm, muscles locking into rigid cables of fury.
"Until the boy walked in," Viktor agreed. "He healed you, Charles. Not because of magic, but because his blood was strong enough to break the seal your father placed on your spine twenty years ago. And the moment you stood up, the old game started all over again."
"Who sent you, Viktor?" I demanded, taking a step toward him. "Was it the commission? Or were you working for my father’s shadow council all along?"
Viktor didn't answer right away. He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a folded, yellowed photograph, sliding it across the desk toward me.
I looked down. It was a picture of a young Viktor standing beside my father outside a safehouse in Geneva, both of them holding identical antique gold pocket watches.
"I was never working for the commission, Charles," Viktor said softly. "I was your father’s executioner long before I became your bodyguard. And my orders—the standing orders that have governed my life for thirty years—were simple: Protect the heir. Eliminate the weakness."
May you like
He paused, his hand tightening around the grip of his hidden weapon.
"For twenty years, your weakness was your grief. For the last three months, your weakness has been the boy."
