Chapter 10
The access did not belong to Celeste.
It belonged to Victor.
He had cloned her credentials three months earlier.
Nolan found the authentication record on an archived server.
Victor used Celeste’s profile to edit the maintenance order.
To move the rescue equipment.
To confirm the camera shutdown.
To create a trail leading directly back to her.
Celeste stared at the evidence in silence.
Her breathing became shallow.
Valentina watched the realization take shape.
Victor had never planned to protect her.
He had planned to use her.
If Owen survived and Valentina attacked them, Victor would present himself as the calm elder trying to stop a family dispute.
If Owen was seriously hurt, Celeste’s credentials and physical shove would make her the obvious culprit.
Either way, Victor would remain standing.
Celeste whispered:
“He was going to give them me.”
Valentina did not answer.
Celeste looked up.
“He told me we were saving the conservatory.”
Her hands shook now.
“He said you were destroying everything your father built.”
Valentina’s eyes remained fixed on the screen.
The major betrayal went deeper than the pond.
Victor had been using Celeste for almost a year.
Her contracts were intentionally kept dependent on the conservatory.
Her debts were quietly refinanced through lenders Victor controlled.
Whenever Celeste considered selling her company, Victor persuaded her to wait.
He needed her financially desperate enough to cooperate when he finally asked for something unforgivable.
Graham’s records showed Victor had commissioned private reports on Valentina’s temperament.
Her travel schedule.
Her arguments with capos.
Her disagreements with donors.
Even Owen’s routines.
He had been preparing an incapacity case long before Valentina announced the trust proposal.
The trust vote did not create the plot.
It accelerated it.
Valentina finally understood Victor’s real motive.
He had spent decades as the adviser behind Morello power.
Her father listened to him.
Matteo listened to him.
Older capos feared him.
Then Valentina took control and slowly removed him from decision-making.
Not because he was incompetent.
Because he believed advice should become authority whenever the leader disagreed.
The conservatory was the last major institution where Victor still possessed automatic influence.
If it entered an independent trust, his era ended.
He was not fighting for money alone.
He was fighting extinction.
Power had become his identity.
Owen was simply the smallest person standing between him and keeping it.
Then Nolan placed one final recovered message in front of Valentina.
Victor to Graham.
If she chooses the boy over the family, we finally prove what I’ve been saying.
Valentina read it twice.
May you like
Victor had mistaken motherhood for weakness.
That was the mistake that would destroy him.
