Chapter 28 - The Truth in the Dark
Daniel didn't answer right away. He closed his eyes, taking a slow, deep breath, as if bracing himself against a fatal blow.
When he opened them, the sapphire blue was stormy, filled with an agonizing mix of fury and raw vulnerability.
"Marcus," Daniel said, his voice deadly quiet, "shut your mouth."
"Why should I?" Marcus sneered, leaning forward. "She already knows about Geneva! She knows you aren't the saintly hero she thinks you are! Tell her who you really are, boy! Tell her how you survived the fire while your brother burned!"
"I survived because you set that fire, Marcus!" Daniel roared, slamming both palms down onto the mahogany table.
The crystal glasses shattered against the wood, dark red wine spilling like blood across the white linen runner. Daniel shot to his feet, towering over the table, his chest heaving with unrestrained fury.
Marcus flinched, but quickly regained his sneer. "Careful, Daniel. Remember who holds the signatures for the European maritime fleet. Remember who holds the offshore proxies."
"I don't give a damn about the proxies!" Daniel snarled. He turned to me, his hands trembling as he stepped around the table toward where I sat.
I instinctively recoiled, pressing my back against the chair.
Seeing me flinch broke something behind Daniel's eyes. He stopped dead in his tracks, dropping to one knee right beside my chair so that his eyes were level with mine. He didn't touch me—he kept his hands planted on the floor, submitting himself entirely to my judgment.
"Clara, listen to me," Daniel said, his voice breaking with an emotion I had never heard from him before. "Look at me. Please."
I looked into his eyes. There was no deception there—only twenty-five years of buried grief and terror.
"My real name is Julian," Daniel choked out. "The boy the world knew as Julian—the monster in prison—was my twin brother. Our father switched our identities when we were six years old to protect me from the debts and enemies Marcus was already cultivating around our family."
"And the fire?" I whispered, my voice shaking.
"Marcus locked our family inside the villa in Zurich twenty-five years ago," Daniel said, his voice thick with unshed tears. "He wanted the entire primary lineage eradicated so he could assume total guardianship of the estate. My mother threw me out of a second-story window into the lake before the roof collapsed. My twin brother survived because Marcus pulled him from the flames—to raise him as his own obedient puppet."
I turned my head slowly toward Marcus. The older man was still sitting calmly, twirling a gold pen between his fingers.
"A puppet who failed," Marcus remarked casually. "Just as Daniel will fail tonight."
"What did you do?" I gasped, dread seizing my throat.
Marcus checked his gold wristwatch. "The rain is washing out the cliff roads as we speak. In approximately fifteen minutes, a team of private maritime security will arrive at this villa. They will find that Daniel Vance, suffering from an acute psychotic break stemming from his brother's trial, tragically took his own life and that of his fiancé."
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Marcus looked directly at me with a demonic smile. "And baby Leo? Poor, orphaned little Leo will be raised under the loving, exclusive guardianship of Marcus Sterling. Along with the sixty-billion-dollar Vance trust."
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