Chapter 15
Lucian tried one last time.
Not violently.
Men like him adapt.
He approached two of my captains with a proposal to restore Knox partnerships in exchange for cutting Valeria out completely.
That told me everything about his definition of family.
His sister had become inconvenient.
So he was willing to trade her.
The captains told me immediately.
Progress.
I met Lucian in a private club he once used freely.
Not anymore.
He stood outside the members’ room because his access had been revoked.
Symbolic enough without planning it.
“You’re wasting good business over emotion,” he said.
“Which emotion?”
“Betrayal.”
I almost smiled.
“That isn’t an emotion. It’s an event.”
He rolled his eyes.
“Valeria made mistakes.”
“So did you.”
“I never touched your daughter.”
“No.”
I looked at him.
“You only helped men plan access around her.”
He hated the distinction because it remained accurate.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“Partnership.”
“No.”
“Why meet?”
“So you stop interpreting silence as negotiation.”
His jaw tightened.
No Knox partnership.
No seat.
No restored access.
Not while Lucian treated relationships like interchangeable pieces.
He called me sentimental.
I let him.
Before leaving, he said:
“Your father would have kept enemies close.”
I turned.
“My father also died believing one ledger was enough to preserve the truth.”
Lucian frowned.
“I learn from dead men without obeying them.”
That sentence stayed with me.
Maybe because I finally meant it.
My father’s world built much of what protected us.
It also created rooms like the black archive where secrets became authority.
I was not closing it.
Memory mattered.
But I copied the important truths across trusted hands.
Margaret received one copy of the Serra section.
Rafe another.
Not because secrets needed more people.
Because no single stolen book should ever again allow one man to rewrite history.
Luca had nearly started a war by targeting a story.
May you like
The answer was not tighter secrecy.
It was fewer monopolies on truth.
