Chương 13 - Sins of the Father
The penthouse on the eighty-second floor was silent except for the low hum of the climate control system. Floor-to-ceiling windows offered a panoramic view of the Manhattan skyline wrapped in a thickening evening fog.
Blythe sat on the edge of the expansive leather sofa, holding a mug of black tea that had long gone cold.
An hour ago, she had watched Dana being wheeled out to an armored transport bound for the airport. Dana hadn't said goodbye. When the elevator doors closed, Dana had looked at Blythe with an expression that shattered Blythe’s heart—not hatred, but profound, grieving disappointment. As if Blythe were already dead.
Heavy footsteps sounded behind her. Soren entered the living room, unbuttoning his suit cuffs.
“She’ll hate you for six months,” Soren said, his tone detached. “Then she will realize the money bought her safety, her freedom, and a life she could never have earned designing office lobbies. Gratitude comes late, Blythe. Survival comes first.”
“You bought her off so she wouldn't remind me of who I used to be,” Blythe said, looking up at him.
Soren paused, rolling up his sleeves to reveal the corded muscle of his forearms and the faint, jagged scars crisscrossing his skin.
“I bought her off so I wouldn’t have to waste twenty men protecting a liability who lacks the stomach for what’s coming.” He walked over to the mahogany bar, poured two fingers of bourbon into a tumbler, and didn't drink. “A courier arrived twenty minutes ago. For you.”
Blythe frowned. “Nobody knows I’m here.”
“Evidently, someone does.”
Soren reached into his jacket pocket and placed an antique silver pocket watch onto the glass coffee table between them.
Blythe’s breath caught in her throat. Her cold tea spilled slightly over her knuckles as she set the cup down.
The watch was scratched, its brass casing worn thin at the edges. Engraved on the back was a crude hunting crest—a stag pierced by two crossed arrows.
“This… this belonged to my father,” Blythe whispered, her hands trembling as she picked it up. The metal felt ice-cold against her skin. “He died in an industrial accident in Detroit when I was fifteen. The police told my mother his body was crushed in a steel press. They never returned his personal effects.”
Soren stood motionless, his expression darkening into a mask of pure, calculating lethality.
“Your father wasn’t crushed in an industrial press, Blythe,” Soren said softly.
The room seemed to shrink. The temperature plunged.
“What are you talking about?” Blythe demanded, standing up. “My father was a union machinist! He worked twelve-hour shifts to pay off our mortgage!”
“Your father was Jonathan Campbell,” Soren said, each word landing like an artillery shell. “And thirty years ago, before I took control of the eastern seaboard, he wasn’t a machinist. He was the chief architect of the Black Sea Syndicate’s smuggling routes through the Great Lakes. He worked for my father, Viktor Vanek.”
Blythe shook her head violently, backing away until the back of her legs hit the low sofa. “No. No, that’s impossible. You’re lying. You’re making this up to trap me here!”
“Look inside the casing,” Soren instructed calmly.
With shaking fingers, Blythe dug her thumbnail into the latch. The back panel snapped open.
Inside the silver lid, beneath a thin pane of yellowed plastic, was a photograph.
It showed two young men standing in front of an old shipyard on Lake Erie. One was Viktor Vanek, recognizable instantly by his ruthless jawline and Soren’s identical steel-gray eyes. The other man, smiling with a cigarette between his teeth, his arm slung over Viktor’s shoulder, was Jonathan Campbell.
Beneath the photo was a slip of heavy parchment, folded tight. Blythe unfolded it with numb fingers. Written in faded black fountain pen ink was a single sentence:
*The son inherits the crown, but the daughter inherits the debt. See you at the Foundry, Soren.*
Blythe’s voice was barely a whisper. “Who sent this?”
Soren drained his glass of bourbon in a single, fluid motion. When his eyes met hers, they burned with an ancient, terrifying fury.
May you like
“The only man who survived the night my father was murdered,” Soren said. “Dmitri Kozlov.”
***
