Chapter Eighteen - Diana
Felix leaves for meetings just after nine, the black SUV disappearing through the estate gates while I watch from the bedroom window.
The house settles into quiet routine—household staff moving through their schedules, guards rotating positions, the controlled rhythm of a world that operates according to Felix’s precise specifications.
I have full access now. The invitation lingers in my mind as I move through the morning.
I spend an hour in the library, attempting to focus on a book I can’t absorb.
The words blur together, my attention circling back to the filing cabinets in Felix’s office, the locked drawers I’ve seen him access with keys he keeps on a chain separate from everything else.
By eleven, I’ve abandoned pretense. I slip into his office, closing the door behind me with a soft click that feels too loud in the silence.
The room smells like him—expensive cologne layered with the faint scent of whiskey and leather.
His desk is precisely organized, dual monitors in sleep mode, papers stacked with edges aligned.
I move to the filing cabinets first, testing drawers I know will be locked.
They are, unsurprisingly. Felix is methodical in ways that create patterns, and I’ve watched him long enough to recognize them.
He keeps the key chain in his desk drawer—the one that requires a combination I’ve seen him enter three times.
Right 22. Left 15. Right 8.
The drawer opens.
Inside, beneath routine office supplies and a handgun I don’t touch, sits a small leather case containing keys organized by size. I try the third one on the filing cabinet lock.
It turns smoothly.
The drawer slides open, revealing folders organized with the same precision as everything else Felix controls.
Coded labels, color-coded tabs, subdivisions that mean nothing to me without context.
I pull the first folder and flip through—shipment manifests, tracking numbers, nothing immediately incriminating.
The second folder contains financial reports. The third, encrypted communications I can’t access without passwords.
The fourth folder sits at the back of the drawer, labeled only with a date range: March-May.
I recognize the timeline immediately. Ethan died in April. Whatever’s in this folder spans the weeks before and after his death.
My hands shake slightly as I pull it free and carry it to Felix’s desk. The folder is thicker than I expected, stuffed with printed emails, handwritten notes, and what looks like risk assessment reports.
I open it.
The first document is an email exchange between Felix and someone identified only as “LS”—Lorenzo Sartore, almost certainly. The date is three weeks before Ethan’s crash.
LS: Clarke is becoming problematic. His investigation has connected maritime logistics to campaign contributions in ways that threaten exposure for both organizations. We’ve offered substantial compensation for discontinuation. He refused.
FR: What’s your timeline for escalation?
LS: Immediate if he proceeds with publication. We can’t allow the routing maps to surface publicly. Too many connections to sitting senators.
FR: Understood. Keep me informed of developments.
The exchange is professional, clinical. No explicit discussion of violence or elimination. Just acknowledgment that Ethan had become a problem requiring handling.
I flip to the next email, dated five days later.
LS: Clarke rejected final offer. Threatened to publish within the week. We’re moving forward with containment protocol. Wanted you aware given peripheral overlap with Rudenko interests.
FR: Appreciated. Sartore territory, Sartore decision. We won’t interfere.
My stomach tightens. This is more than just allowing Ethan to die. He knew weeks beforehand, that his death was imminent.
The next document is worse.
It’s an internal memo Felix wrote to his financial handlers, dated two days before Ethan’s death. The subject line reads: Market Repositioning Opportunities—Clarke Investigation Termination.
I force myself to read it slowly, absorbing every word.
If Sartore proceeds with Clarke containment as indicated, several contracts currently blocked by his pending exposé will become available for acquisition.
Specifically: Port logistics oversight for Newark operations, maritime freight consulting for three senators whose campaigns Clarke was investigating, and offshore routing management previously held by firms he’d flagged for federal review.
Recommend we position for rapid absorption of these contracts pending Clarke’s investigation termination. Estimated value: $12-15M annually across combined operations. No direct involvement required—simply capitalize on market gap created by Sartore resolution.
The language is careful, coded in business terminology that never explicitly mentions murder.
The meaning is unmistakable. Felix calculated that Ethan’s death would create opportunities for Rudenko expansion.
He didn’t order the killing, didn’t participate directly, but he recognized the advantage and positioned to benefit from it.
My brother died, and Felix absorbed the contracts his investigation had threatened.
I sit at his desk for a long time, staring at the memo until the words blur together.
The betrayal feels different than if he’d simply admitted letting Ethan die.
This is worse. This is Felix recognizing that my brother’s murder would strengthen his position and deliberately planning to profit from it.
He didn’t pull the trigger. He cleared obstacles so the shooter had a clean line of sight, then stepped in to collect what the body left behind.
The folder contains more emails, more projections, more clinical discussions of how to navigate the fallout from Ethan’s death in ways that maximized Rudenko advantage.
I read through all of it with numb detachment, cataloging evidence of exactly how calculated Felix’s decision to stay uninvolved had been.
By the time I finish, it’s past two in the afternoon. My hands have stopped shaking. The hollow feeling in my chest has expanded into something cold and sharp.
I print copies of the most damning emails—the ones where Felix acknowledges Sartore’s timeline, the memo about market repositioning, the follow-up communications confirming contract absorption.
The printer hums quietly, spitting out pages that document my husband’s complicity in my brother’s death more thoroughly than anything I found in Ethan’s encrypted drives.
I return the original folder to the filing cabinet, lock it carefully, and replace the keys exactly where I found them. Then I take the printed copies and leave the office, closing the door behind me.