Chapter 8
The safe house was a fortress, impenetrable from the outside, but Damon knew the true danger was already locked inside with them. Selena’s words echoed in his mind: You'll spend the rest of your life wondering which one of your trusted lieutenants is waiting to put a bullet in your back.
Damon sat in the war room, a secure, windowless bunker beneath the main floor. The walls were lined with monitors displaying the heavily guarded perimeter. His top three lieutenants stood before him: Silas, the towering enforcer; Victor, the financial mastermind; and Julian, the head of his personal security detail.
"Arthur and Selena Cross are secured in the holding cells at the main compound," Silas reported, his gruff voice steady. "The Cross family is scrambling. Without Arthur to lead them, they are fracturing into smaller factions."
"Let them fracture," Damon said coldly, leaning back in his leather chair, steepling his tattooed fingers. "Right now, our primary concern is internal."
The three men exchanged uneasy glances.
"Boss?" Julian asked cautiously. "What do you mean?"
"Selena didn't arrange the car crash on her own," Damon stated, his dark eyes analyzing every micro-expression on their faces. "Someone in this syndicate altered the security rotation that night. Someone made sure Miriam’s car took the cliff road. Someone helped switch the dental records with the coroner."
Silence fell over the war room, thick and venomous.
"You think one of us is a traitor," Victor said, his face paling slightly.
"I know one of you is," Damon replied, his voice a low, lethal rumble. "And I am going to find out who."
Upstairs, in the medical wing, Mara was pacing the floor. Miriam was finally asleep, exhausted by the trauma of her release. Lily was sleeping peacefully beside her mother. The quiet of the room was oppressive, broken only by the hum of the ventilation system.
Mara stepped out into the hallway to get a glass of water from the adjacent kitchenette. As she filled the glass, she heard muffled voices coming from the stairwell nearby. She froze, pressing her back against the wall, holding her breath.
"He knows," a frantic, hushed voice hissed. It was Julian, the head of security.
"Calm down," a second voice replied, chillingly calm. It was a voice Mara recognized instantly—Elias, the captain of the estate guards. "He suspects, but he has no proof. Selena is locked up; she can't talk to him unless he tortures her, and Arthur will beg for her life."
"If he looks at the encrypted logs from two years ago, he'll see my authorization codes on the garage dispatch," Julian panicked. "I did it for the family, Elias! Miriam was going to take the kid and go to the feds! She was a liability!"
"And you made the right call," Elias soothed, though the underlying menace was clear. "But if Damon finds out, he won't care about our reasoning. We have to finish the job."
Mara’s blood turned to ice. She pressed her hand over her mouth to muffle a gasp.
"What are you saying?" Julian asked.
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"I'm saying the safe house isn't as secure as Damon thinks," Elias replied coldly. "I have the bypass codes for the ventilation system. We pump in the gas, we take out Damon, the wife, and the kid. We blame it on a Cross family strike team. Then, we take the empire."
Mara didn't wait to hear another word. She abandoned the glass of water, sprinting silently down the carpeted hallway back toward the war room, her heart hammering a frantic, desperate rhythm.
