Chapter 12 - THE CHOICE

We returned home the next day in silence. The mansion felt emptier than ever. Richard’s study remained closed. Elena’s things—her clothes, her books, her favorite perfume—still stood in our bedroom, exactly where she had left them.

David walked through the house like a ghost. He touched nothing. He spoke little. He sat by the phone from dawn until late at night, waiting. Hoping.

For three weeks, nothing happened.

Then one evening, as I brought tea into his study, David held up his phone.

“She called,” he said, his voice trembling. “Ten minutes ago. From a number in Paraguay. She didn’t speak. She just played a song. And then she hung up.”

“Did she leave anything else?”

“She breathed my name,” David said, tears spilling over. “Once. Quietly. So I’d know it was really her.”

He set the phone down carefully on the desk.

“She’s alive,” he said. “And she’s fighting. That call… she risked everything to make it. Voss must have left the room. Or slept. She found a phone. She called me. To tell me she’s still there. Still fighting.”

“Then we don’t give up on her,” I said.

David stood up. He walked to the wall map of South America and traced a finger along the border.

“Voss thinks he’s safe,” David said. “He thinks he’s beyond our reach. But he’s wrong. Elena knows his weaknesses. She knows his fears. And she knows that every time he hurts her… he pushes her closer to telling us everything.”

He turned to me, his expression clear and resolute.

“I’ve been waiting for the law to catch up,” David said. “For warrants. Extradition. Judges. But judges can be bought. Laws take time. And Voss knows that better than anyone.”

“David… what are you planning?”

“I’m going to finish this the way Richard would have.” David placed his hand on the map, over the spot where Voss had fled. “I’m going to drain every account he has left. Freeze every asset. Pressure every associate. Make his life so miserable, so impossible… that he has no choice but to come out of hiding and fight me face to face.”

May you like

She Destroyed My Priceless Monet Painting—Then Discovered Who She Had Ju...

“Who let you in, you filthy disgrace?”” My mother-in-law crossed the ballroom before I had taken three steps inside. I stopped b...

THE SHOES SHE STOLE WERE NOTHING COMPARED TO WHAT SHE LOST

My stepsister stole my shoes, my dress, and my chance to walk the runway. But she made one mistake. She assumed I couldn't creat...

They Stole My Design, But They Couldn't Steal What I Knew

The export bar reached one hundred percent. For the first time in three months, I let myself smile. Then a hand reached past my...

“And Elena?”

“When he has nothing left… he’ll need her. And she’ll be ready.” David looked at me, his eyes burning with quiet purpose. “She made her choice the moment she gave us that list. She chose us. She chose our child. And I will spend every resource I have… to make sure she never regrets it.”