Chapter 160
Chapter 160
Nico’s POV
I’d always known this day would come,
The moment Dominic found me.
What I hadn’t planned for was how good it would feel to escape.
Blood still dripped from my split lip, a gift from our dear king. My wrists ached from the cuffs, bruises already forming. My jaw felt like it had been cracked in two. But I was breathing. And as long as I was breathing, I wasn’t done.
I kept my head low as the guards shoved me into the armored van.
Julian looked over at me with nothing but hatred. “Don’t even blink wrong. You won’t like how it ends.”
I blinked. Twice.
He didn’t laugh. No one did.
They were too confident.
Dominic had made the mistake of thinking he’d already won.
Amateurs.
What they didn’t realize was–this was the part I thrived in.
The moment before the cut.
The flicker of a match before the fire.
I waited. Silent. Calm.
Then, two streets away from the estate, the van jolted.
Bang. 7
One of the tires blew.
Screams filled the comms. The driver cursed. The van skidded off the road and crashed into a ditch.
And I grinned.
Because that was my cue.
Chaos cracked the world open. Gunshots rang out smoke bombs rolled under the van. Shouting. Confusion. My men had waited long enough.
They attacked clean. Sharp. Just like I’d trained them.
Julian tried to hold the line. He got one of my guys in the leg–but not before they overwhelmed the front. The back doors blew open, and I dove out just in time to miss the next spray of bullets.
Hands grabbed me. “Boss! Come on!”
I didn’t look back.
1/6
Because I knew what came next.
Revenge.
I sat in the safehouse, pressing the ice to my jaw. Every part of me screamed. But my grin? Still there.
Dominic thought he had me.
That was cute.
But I had everything.
Backup plans. Blackmail files. Leverage tucked into every corner of this godforsaken city.
And most of all?
I had his attention.
I picked up the phone. Dialed into the secure server. The screen flickered to life.
I adjusted the camera. Looked into the lens.
“Hello, old friend,” I said with a bloody smile. “Surprised?”
I leaned back, letting the bruises show. “You always said loyalty mattered more than power. But power–power gets things done. It changes the rules. It buys silence. Loyalty just gets you killed.”
I lifted my glass. “To survival. And snakes like me.”
A pause.
Then: “You’re losing your grip, Dominic. Bit by bit. First Mikael. Then your secrets. And now me.”
I leaned in. Voice cold.
7
“You forget–I’m the snake.”
I hit send.
And just like that…
The game reset.
Victoria was already waiting when I walked into the dimly lit suite. Legs crossed, a glass of red in her hand, her hair pinned back like she had nothing to
fear in this world.
“Still bleeding?” she asked without looking up.
I smirked, wiping the corner of my mouth where the skin had split again. “Nothing a little power can’t fix.”
She looked up slowly, tilting her head. “You sent the video?”
“Of course. Right on cue. Dominic’s probably tearing up his office by now.”
“Good.” Her eyes narrowed, sharp as razors. “He needs to feel it.”
2/6
I poured myself a drink. “We’ve sent a message. What next?”
Victoria tapped her fingers on the armrest. “We make sure he doesn’t recover. We break him slowly. Pull every string he has until there’s nothing left.
She stood, heels clicking softly on the tile. “It’s time we release a little information from my yault.”
My brow arched. “Which one?”
She smiled faintly, walking toward a leather briefcase sitting at the far end of the table. “The one that matters.”
久
She clicked it open. Inside? Folders. Printed documents. Flash drives. Photos.
Evidence.
Names.
Dates.
Transactions.
And one thick file labeled in red ink: Sterling. Dominic.
I blinked. “You said you were saving that.”
“I was,” she said, handing it to me. “But I think now is the perfect time to remind your friend who the real monsters are.”
I flipped through it slowly.
A younger Dominic, shirt soaked in blood, standing over a man who looked far too similar to a well–known government official. A dead man, if the angle of his neck was anything to go by.
Another page, encrypted files showing financial trails that should’ve been impossible. Evidence of manipulation, shell corporations, the kind of stuff no ordinary man could set up.
And another, texts between Dominic and someone named A. G. Hart.
“You do know if this gets out,” I muttered, “he won’t just fall. He’ll burn. Everything tied to his name…”
“That’s the point,” Victoria said. “I’m not looking to spook him. I want him to crumble. I want him desperate.”
I closed the file.
“Where’d you get this?”
Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. “Same way I get everything, Nico. People talk when they’re afraid.”
There was something bitter in her tone. A flash of something I didn’t recognize in her eyes.
“You know,” I said slowly, “you talk a lot about ruining Dominic. But you never talk about why.”
She poured another drink, quiet.
And then: “He ruined something of mine. Someone of mine.”
I waited.
She didn’t continue.
So I didn’t push.
3/6
Chapter 160
Instead, I picked up the flash drive from the case. “This enough to rattle him?”
She nodded once. “But don’t give it all at once. Leak pieces. Let the fear do the rest.”
I chuckled. “I like the way you think.”
She stepped closer, her voice soft now. “Just
looked at her. “And you aren’t?”
don’t get sentimental, Nico. You’re too close to this. You always were.”
She turned away. “I don’t have that luxury anymore.”
There was a knock on the door.
One of my men entered. “We found something. Or someone.”
Victoria didn’t flinch. “Who?”
“Someone close to Dominic. A girl. Not Aria.”
I straightened. “What kind of girl?”
“From his past. Early twenties. Real name’s Eliza Ward. She used to work for one of his companies before she vanished. We think she might’ve been a loose end. She resurfaced in Avalon two days ago.”
Victoria’s gaze darkened.
“Bring her in,” she said.
“Already on it.”
As the door shut again, Victoria turned back to me. “It’s not just about power anymore. It’s about unmasking him. Piece by piece. Reputation. Trust. Love. Destroy them all.”
“You’re relentless.”
She didn’t smile. “I learned from the best.”
leaned back, the flash drive twirling between my fingers.
Dominic had always said the past didn’t matter.
He was wrong.
The past was exactly what would destroy him.
I kept the flash drive close, letting it rest between my knuckles like a loaded gun. Victoria didn’t say much after that—just sat across from me, legs crossed, that eternal mask of calm etched across her face. She always wore it when things were about to turn messy.
The girl–Eliza Ward–was in transport.
We had the drive.
The files.
The receipts.
Everything we needed to hit him from the inside out. If Aria was the wound, then this–this was the infection that would rot him from within.
Chapter 160
“You’re quiet,” I said, tossing the drive once and catching it again. “Not having second thoughts, are you?”
Victoria’s eyes flicked up. “No. I’m just thinking about which secret to burn him with first.”
Her phone buzzed.
One glance at the screen and I saw it.
Her entire face changed.
“What?” I asked, standing.
She didn’t speak.
Didn’t blink.
She just reached slowly for her wine glass and placed it down–carefully, like her hands were suddenly fragile.
“Victoria?”
Her voice came out low, distant. “I had a man… my source. He worked inside Dominic’s corporate network for over six years. Helped me build that vault.”
I waited, stomach tightening.
“He’s dead.”
The words dropped like a slab of iron.
“What?”
She swallowed, eyes hardening. “I just got the call. They found him. Burned. His fingertips removed. Teeth smashed in.”
“Fuck.”
She stood, moving across the room in tight, sharp steps.
I followed. “That’s not just a hit. That’s a message.”
“No,” she whispered, her voice shaking in a way I’d never heard before. “It’s more than that. The files were stored off–site. His part of the vault–his access –it was biometric.”
I froze. “Meaning?”
She turned to me, dead in the eyes. “We can’t open it without him.”
Silence pressed between us.
All those secrets. All those years.
Gone.
I took a breath. “We still have the flash drive-”
She cut in. “It’s a decoy. Just the surface–level dirt. The real things? The ones that would have buried him, exposed the roots of his em
She shook her head.
“Gone.”
12:01 Thu, 29 May G
Chapter 160
I sat back down, disbelief crawling up my spine.
“I don’t understand. He didn’t even know your source’s identity.”
“Exactly,” she whispered. “Which means someone else did.”
A second of stillness.
Then she reached for her phone again, typing fast.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking who accessed the source’s backup contact list.”
The screen glowed.
Then dimmed.
She went still again. Not blinking. Not breathing.
“Victoria?”
She looked up.
And this time, for the first time since I met her… I saw fear.
“It was someone close.”
“Who?”
She didn’t answer.
She didn’t have to.
Her phone dropped from her hand.
And on the screen, a single message glowed bright:
“You should’ve buried your secrets deeper.”
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