Chapter 12 - the shadow in the archive
Dominic instantly turned, raising his gun toward the dark corner of Archive 4. Sofia pulled Emma behind his massive frame.
Out of the shadows stepped a woman in her early sixties.
She wore a dark tailored wool coat, elegant diamond earrings, and carried a sleek black walking stick. Her face was strikingly beautiful, with sharp, commanding features, pale skin, and cold, calculating eyes.
Dominic’s gun hand trembled.
"Mother?" Dominic breathed, his voice cracking for the first time in his life.
**Victoria Moretti**—the woman Dominic had mourned for twenty years—stood before him, very much alive.
"Hello, Dominic," Victoria said smoothly, her voice rich, refined, and entirely devoid of motherly warmth. "Put the gun down, son. You look absurd."
"You're dead," Dominic rasped, his vision blurring with shock. "I stood at your grave!"
"You stood at an empty box filled with stones," Victoria corrected him, taking a slow step toward the desk. "Your father was a weak, emotional fool who almost ruined our empire with his foolish wars. I staged my death so I could build the Founders in silence. We control the judges, the police chief, and three rival syndicates."
"You killed Elena," Dominic growled, his knuckles turning white as he aimed the barrel directly at her forehead. "You put a bomb in my wife's car! You killed your own four-year-old granddaughter!"
Victoria’s eyes narrowed slightly, a faint flicker of annoyance crossing her face. "Elena was going to go to the Federal Prosecutor with our financial ledgers. She was a threat to everything I built! As for the child... collateral damage is an unfortunate reality of power."
Sofia gasped in sheer horror, pulling Emma tighter against her chest.
"You monster," Dominic whispered.
"I am a strategist!" Victoria snapped, her voice cutting through the room like ice. "I made this family untouchable! And now, you are going to give me that journal, Dominic. Because if you don't, my men outside will kill that maid and her bastard child in front of your eyes."
Dominic glanced back at Sofia. Sofia met his gaze, her expressive chestnut eyes filled with terror, but also an unshakable trust in him.
"You're wrong about one thing, Mother," Dominic said, his voice dropping to a terrifying, deadly calm.
Victoria raised an eyebrow. "Oh? And what is that?"
"I'm not soft like my father," Dominic said.
Before Victoria could react, Dominic didn't shoot her—he turned his gun and shot the heavy overhead gas pipe running along the ceiling of Archive 4!
A deafening hiss of pressurized gas filled the small stone room, creating a thick, blinding cloud.
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"Run!" Dominic shouted, grabbing Sofia’s arm and dragging her and Emma out through a secondary drainage archway as Victoria’s hidden bodyguards rushed into the gas-filled room, firing blindly into the dark!
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