Chapter 3 - The Alliance of the Wolves
The documents in Victor's hand were not old. They were crisp, clean, and dated from just six months ago.
They were credit card statements from a luxury boutique hotel in downtown Chicago—The Peninsula. The room had been booked under the name of EH Holdings, the same shell company Ethan used for his private transactions.
But it was the room service charges and the spa appointments that caught Victor’s eye.
They were signed for by Natalie Harrington.
Victor felt a sudden, sickening wave of nausea rise in his throat. He turned the page, his eyes locking onto a series of private investigator photographs that had been tucked into the very back of the manila envelope.
The photographs were clear, high-resolution, and utterly damning.
They showed Natalie, her face glowing with a bright, happy smile, walking hand-in-hand out of the hotel lobby with Ethan Harrington. In another photo, they were sitting together at a secluded corner table in an upscale restaurant, Ethan’s hand resting intimately over hers.
And in the final photograph, taken in the parking garage of the clinic where Natalie had her prenatal checkups, Ethan was kissing her on the lips—a deep, familiar kiss that had nothing to do with familial affection.
Victor’s world collapsed.
The pregnancy. The sudden, miraculous conception after twenty-three years of barren marriage—the conception that had occurred just as Victor was preparing to file for divorce after discovering Natalie’s financial extravagance.
It wasn't a miracle.
It was a cold, calculated trap designed to strip him of his fortune and hand control of his empire directly to his brother and his unfaithful wife.
"They did this together," Victor whispered, his voice trembling with a mixture of grief and a rising, white-hot fury. "Natalie and Ethan. The child... the baby she’s carrying..."
"It’s Ethan’s," Martin Lowell said, his face grim as he stared at the photographs. "Legally, because the child was conceived during your marriage, the law presumes it’s yours. That’s why they fought so hard against the DNA test. They knew that if you signed that trust agreement today, nine hundred and eighty million dollars of your personal wealth would be transferred into a trust that Ethan would eventually control as the child’s 'guardian' once they divorced you."
"They were going to take my money, my company, and my name," Victor said, his fists clenching so tightly his knuckles popped. "And they were going to use my own brother's child to do it."
"And Sarah?" Victor looked back at Maya. "How did Sarah get these photos? How did she know?"
"My mother was working as a night receptionist at the Peninsula Hotel last year," Maya explained, her voice quiet. "She saw them together. She recognized Ethan from the old days. She knew who Natalie was because she saw her in the newspapers with you. She started looking into it, checking the room registries, copying the receipts. She wanted to warn you, Victor. But she was too afraid. She knew how powerful Ethan was. She was afraid he’d have her thrown in jail, or worse."
"So she kept it," Victor said, his eyes softening as he looked at the weathered envelope. "She kept it to protect me."
"She loved you, Victor," Maya said simply. "Until the day she died, she always said you were a good man who had been surrounded by wolves."
Victor stood up slowly, his towering frame casting a long, dark shadow across the consultation room. The trembling in his hands had stopped, replaced by a rigid, iron-like calm that Martin Lowell had only seen when Victor was about to launch a hostile takeover of a rival corporation.
"Martin," Victor said, his voice flat and deadly.
"Yes, Victor?"
"Get the District Attorney on the phone. And tell the bailiff we are going back into that courtroom."
"What are you going to do?"
May you like
Victor picked up the manila envelope, holding it against his chest like a shield.
"I'm going to kill an empire," he said.
