Chapter 2 - the frozen ledger
The silence inside the courtyard stretched so thin it felt as though the winter air itself would break. Guests stood paralyzed behind their wine glasses, while Victor’s personal security detail quietly moved into positions around the perimeter, blocking every exit from the upper garden.
Celeste pulled her soaked silk shawl tighter around her shivering shoulders. Her arrogant composure was fractured, but her icy blue eyes maintained a fierce, defensive glare.
"I don't know what you're talking about, Victor," Celeste hissed, stepping out of the puddle of melted ice. "You're humiliating your family over a child's playground squabble."
Victor didn't move an inch. His broad shoulders remained squared, his midnight-black suit unruffled by the wind. "You haven't spoken Eddie's name in seven years, Celeste. But tonight, you claim my son replaces the bloodline. You only use that word when you think you hold a card no one else can see."
Victor gestured flatly with his hand. His head of security, a heavily built man named Marcus, stepped forward from the archway holding a thin leather document case.
"Boss," Marcus reported in a low, even tone. "We intercepted a courier at the main gate two hours ago. He was carrying a sealed vault request from the Metropolitan Registry, stamped with the late Lorenzo Moretti’s private seal."
Celeste’s eyes darted toward Marcus, her hands trembling against the wet emerald fabric of her dress.
Victor took the document case, opening the brass clasp with a heavy click. Inside lay a single sheet of heavy parchment—a certified copy of a birth registry filed at Saint Jude's Private Hospital seven years ago, bearing the signature of Victor’s late brother, Julian.
"Seven years ago," Victor spoke, his voice carrying the deep, resonant authority of a man who ruled an empire, "my brother Julian died in a fiery crash three weeks before Eddie was born. You took control of Julian’s estate, claiming his branch of the family had no heir."
"Julian had no heir!" Celeste snapped, her voice rising in desperate defiance. "He died childless! Everyone in the syndicate knows that!"
"Then why," Victor asked, lifting the document into the warm glow of the Christmas lights, "does this registry list a boy born to Julian Moretti's legal wife at three in the morning... forty-eight hours before Eddie was brought to my doorstep?"
Celeste went pale. She opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came out.
Beside Victor, little Eddie looked up, holding Caesar's collar with his small hand. "Dad... is auntie talking about the papers in the attic?"
Victor crouched down beside his son, his battle-hardened expression softening slightly as he looked at the boy's fair, rosy face. "What papers, Eddie?"
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"The ones with the gold ribbons," Eddie whispered innocently. "Logan took them out of the locked chest yesterday and hid them under the Christmas tree."
Victor stood up slowly, his dark eyes shifting toward the enormous forty-foot tree glowing in the center of the courtyard.
