Chapter 7
Julian groaned on the floor, clutching his chest where the electrical discharge had left a scorch mark on his designer shirt.
"You... you’re insane," Julian wheezed, blood trickling from a small cut on his lower lip.
"You used a modified stun device."
"I used the residual current of a compressed titanium hull imploding under five thousand pounds of pressure," Martha said coldly.
"Physics has a way of balancing its own accounts."
Victoria knelt beside Julian, not out of affection, but to check his pulse.
Her fingers brushed against his coat pocket, where a thin, leather-bound notebook slipped out onto the marble floor.
It fell open to a page filled with handwritten columns of numbers and naval coordinates.
Victoria picked it up, her eyes scanning the faded ink.
"What is this?" Victoria demanded, holding up the booklet.
Julian tried to bat her hand away, his eyes wide with panic.
"Give that back! It’s nothing, Tori—just old shipping manifests."
"It’s not shipping manifests," Martha said from across the room.
"That is the original salvage log from the Vance family’s private recovery mission to the trench.
It lists every piece of classified military hardware they illegally harvested from the wreck."
Victoria turned the pages, her heart sinking further with every line.
There were names, dates, and bank transfer receipts.
And right there, signed in her father’s distinctive, sharp handwriting, was an agreement to falsify the casualty report in exchange for a twenty-percent stake in Vance Maritime Corp.
"My father sold his crew out for stock options," Victoria whispered, the words tasting like ash in her mouth.
"He didn't just leave them to drown," Martha added softly.
"He flooded the aft compartment remotely to ensure no survivors could surface to testify about the structural flaws in the sub's hull."
Julian pushed himself up to his knees, panting heavily.
"He had no choice!" Julian shouted defensively, his face twisted in desperation.
"The navy would have court-martialed him for the design flaws anyway! It was self-preservation!"
Victoria looked at the man she had planned to marry in three days.
The charm, the elegance, the high-society status—it was all built on the bones of innocent men and women.
"You knew," Victoria said, her voice deadpan.
"You knew all along, Julian.
That’s why your family funded this boutique.
That’s why you proposed to me."
Julian froze, his guilty expression confirming every word.
May you like
"It was about containing the Sterling bloodline," Julian admitted bitterly.
"Keep the secrets inside the family."
