Chapter 22 – Vivian
Rain pounds against the windows like the sky is grieving with us. It’s been falling since Kyle died, and it hasn’t stopped—not once. The whole house feels swollen with it: fear, exhaustion, and something rawer sitting thick in the air, refusing to let me breathe.
I haven’t spoken much. I can’t.
Every time I blink, I see it again—Dimitri covered in blood, his arms locked around me, the bodyguard’s corpse lying only a few feet away.
What haunts me isn’t the violence.
It’s the way it felt right to be held by him in that moment.
The way my first instinct wasn’t to recoil but to grab his shirt, bury my face in him, and whisper his name like he was the only safe thing left in the world.
He told me he had to work and that he’d come back when he was done. But he hasn’t returned.
And I’ve been unable to sleep.
My body feels wired, my mind replaying everything on a loop—his voice, his hands, the gunshot, the blood. The way he looked at me as if losing me would’ve been the real tragedy.
I pull my knees to my chest and stare at the door, listening for footsteps.
Nothing.
Just the rain and the quiet ache of waiting.
I can’t lie here anymore. The waiting is driving me insane.
If Dimitri won’t come back yet, then I’ll go to him. Maybe he’s in the study. Maybe he just needed space to think, or to strategize, or to calm down after everything that happened.
I pull on a sweater and slip out of the room, padding down the hallway with the rain still echoing through the walls. The house feels too big, too quiet, like it’s holding its breath with me.
When I reach the study, I try the handle.
Locked.
My stomach dips.
He wasn’t working in here.
He left the house.
Again.
A cold ripple runs through me. If Dimitri is out there moving pieces, hunting shadows…someone else could die before morning.
No. I’m done being passive. I’m done waiting for answers while other people decide my fate.
I enter the code and unlock the study. The room smells like him: clean, sharp, steady. Lamplight casts a warm circle over the desk. I close the door behind me and step inside, my heartbeat loud in the silence.
I go straight to the drawer where he keeps the files.
Koval Operations – Active Leads.
I pull the folder out and spread everything across the desk. I’ve seen it before, but not entirely. Maybe I missed something. Pages, photos, transcripts, financial trails. My hands are shaking, but I force myself to focus. I trace my finger down the columns of names…transactions…dates…
And then it hits me again.
Dubois.
My mother’s maiden name.
Right there.
Over and over.
Buried in transfers Dimitri still hasn’t explained to me.
My breath quickens.
I reread every line, every timestamp, every signature—searching for something that proves what my heart already insists: She’s innocent. She has to be.
But the paper doesn’t care about how I feel.
And the deeper I look, the more afraid I am of what I’m going to find. For hours, I piece the pattern together, line by line, until my eyes burn.
The accounts were opened eighteen months ago.
Eighteen months ago….
After my mother’s first stroke.
When she could barely speak.
When she was under full-time medical care in France.
My throat tightens.
I pull her medical timeline closer, laying it beside the banking documents. The dates clash violently. She wasn’t even moving around then, much less orchestrating covert transfers.
I check her passport logs next.
Not a single stamp.
Not one entry.
Not one exit.
She hasn’t used that passport since months before the accounts were created.
My heart pounds faster.
I flip through the pages again, this time checking transfer locations. Not Paris. Not New York. Not anywhere she’s ever been for treatment.
Zurich.
Every single transaction originates from Zurich.
I check the listed intermediaries, tracing them through Dimitri’s contact list, then through the cross-referenced notes in the red-marked section of the folder.
My stomach drops.
These intermediaries—every one of them—passed through companies owned or previously owned by Charles Deveraux.
The truth hits me all at once.
My mother has been framed.
The same man who ruined Dimitri’s company.
The same man who stole from the Laurents.
The same man who orchestrated the Kovals’ resurgence.
The same man whose name coils like poison through every disaster Dimitri has ever mentioned.
Deveraux.
My breath stutters, my pulse loud in my ears. I grip the edge of the table because the room tilts for a second, like the air itself can’t believe what I’m seeing.
My mother wasn’t the mole.
She wasn’t selling information.
She wasn’t capable of any of this—physically or otherwise.
He used her maiden name because it was convenient.
Because it was believable.
Because Dimitri would suspect her.
Because I would doubt myself.
A clean, elegant trap.
A trap that almost worked.
Rage unfurls tight and hot under my ribs—not the loud kind, but the silent, surgical kind that sharpens every thought. The rain pounds harder outside, like the world is echoing the storm rising inside me.
I swipe the documents together, spreading them out in a new pattern. This time, I’m not searching.
I’m confirming.
Every line.
Every date.
Every signature.
Every movement.
All Deveraux.
All deliberate.
I sit back, shaking—not from fear, but fury.
Someone has been playing god with my life. With Dimitri’s war. With my family’s name.
Someone thought I wouldn’t look closely.
They were wrong.
I’m still staring at the documents when the door opens. I don’t jump; I don’t even look up right away. His energy always enters a room before he does.
Dimitri steps inside, shutting the door with a soft click. He’s damp from the rain, shoulders tight with tension. But his expression…quietly calm.
“I didn’t find you in the suite,” he says. “I knew I’d find you here.”
I lift the files with trembling fingers. “Have you seen this?” My voice betrays me—tight, fragile, stretched thin. “It wasn’t her. Dimitri, it’s all fake. The accounts, the signatures—everything. They used her name because she couldn’t defend herself. They used her.”
He doesn’t take the files right away. Instead, he studies me first—like he’s checking for cracks, for bleeding edges, for all the places the world has been trying to break me.
Then he nods once. Slow. Controlled.
“I know.”
The breath leaves me in a sharp rush. “You…knew?”
“I suspected,” he says quietly. “Sylvester traced one of the IPs to Zurich last night. I needed confirmation before telling you.”
The room tilts. The rain outside grows louder, hammering at the windows like a warning.
I stare at him, stunned. “You waited?”
His jaw flexes. “I wanted to be sure.”
“Sure?” My voice catches. “This is my mother, Dimitri.”
“I know,” he murmurs, stepping closer. “Which is exactly why I didn’t want to give you hope until I had proof.”
My throat burns. My knees nearly give out from the sheer relief ripping through me.
For weeks I’ve lived with this nauseating dread that maybe my family isn’t as innocent as I need them to be—that maybe the rot runs in my blood too.
But now…for the first time in what feels like forever, I can breathe.
A sob escapes me before I can swallow it down. Hot tears blur the documents on the desk.
Dimitri doesn’t rush. He moves slowly, almost cautiously, like he’s approaching something breakable. Then he cups my face with both hands, his palms warm despite the cold storm outside. His thumb sweeps a tear from my cheek.
“She’s innocent,” he says, his voice gentler than I’ve ever heard it. “And you—” his eyes soften, almost unbearably, “—you were right. This isn’t a war between us anymore.”
A small, shaky sound leaves me as I lean into his touch. “Then who’s pulling the strings?”
His expression changes instantly—the tenderness folding into something sharper, deadlier.
“Deveraux isn’t just laundering money,” he says. “He’s aligning the Kovals, the old bankers, every family with a grudge against the Rusnaks. He’s building a shadow syndicate—and he’s using both our names to fund it.”
A cold, violent shiver runs through me. “So this is bigger than revenge.”
“This,” Dimitri says, voice flat and lethal, “is extermination.”
The word hangs between us like a blade.
And then he adds, low and certain, “And it ends with him.”
For a long moment, neither of us moves. The storm outside presses against the windows, loud and relentless, but the space between us feels strangely still.
Then I reach for him.
Not out of fear.
Not out of desperation.
But out of conviction.
“Then we end it together,” I say quietly.
Dimitri’s eyes change—softening at the edges, sharpening at the center. He takes my hand, lifts it slowly, and presses a kiss to my knuckles like he’s sealing an oath.
“Together,” he echoes.
Thunder rolls again, a low growl wrapping around the house.
But he’s already shaking his head.
“Before we go any further—remember what you promised me.” His thumb strokes over my hand, but his voice is firm. Unmovable. “You’re not getting involved. You’re part of my team, yes, but your safety comes first.”
“Dim—”
“No.” His voice cracks a little on the word, and he steps closer, gripping my waist, my wrist, anything he can touch. “Vivian. No. Please. I won’t put you in the line of danger anymore. I won’t.”
His forehead drops to mine, breath warm, trembling slightly.
“You almost died twice,” he whispers. “I can’t—I won’t survive a third.”
And just like that, the storm outside feels quieter than the one inside him. The door swings open before I can answer him.
Sylvester steps inside, soaked from the rain, expression carved from stone. One look at his face and my heart stops.
“What happened?” Dimitri asks, voice low and dangerous.
Sylvester doesn’t waste time. He hands over a tablet, screen glowing with a decrypted message.
A single coded line.
Dimitri reads it first. His jaw locks. His fingers tighten around the tablet until I hear the faint creak of plastic.
“What is it?” I whisper.
He doesn’t answer.
Sylvester does.
“It’s from Zurich. Intercepted thirty minutes ago.” His voice is grim. “It’s addressed to you.”
Dimitri turns the screen toward me.
A chill slices straight through my spine.
The mother has been moved.
Next, the bride.
My stomach drops. The room tilts.
My mother.
Me.
“They know,” I breathe. “They know we’re onto them.”
Dimitri is already shaking his head, stepping in front of me like a shield. “No. This is a scare tactic.”
But I hear the slight tremor in his voice. He’s lying—to himself or to me, I’m not sure.
Sylvester clears his throat, eyes flicking toward me with something that looks painfully close to pity. “Your mother was at a clinic for a checkup. Someone pulled her out through a back-channel medical transfer under a false family authorization.”
I grip the edge of the desk to stay standing.
“My mother isn’t safe,” I whisper. “Dimitri…neither am I.”
His hand clamps over mine instantly, firm, steady, claiming.
“No,” he says, voice low and absolute, “you’re safe with me.”
The thunder outside cracks like the sky is splitting open—but it’s nothing compared to the sound of Dimitri’s fury beating in the silence that follows.