Chapter 32
Domenico
I sit alone inside my house late at night while a news segment about Marcus Krogen plays quietly on the television. The volume is low, barely loud enough to fill the silence surrounding me.
A glass of whiskey rests untouched on the coffee table beside the couch, the ice slowly melting as my attention remains fixed on the screen.
The report revisits Marcus's legacy, cycling through old footage from business conferences, charity galas, political meetings, and international trade summits.
To the rest of the world, he is remembered as the visionary businessman who transformed the Krogen Empire into one of the largest shipping companies in the world. They speak about his leadership with admiration. They call him ambitious. Charismatic. Brilliant.
I know a different Marcus Krogen.
The footage changes again, showing him years earlier at another corporate event. A much younger Zora stands quietly beside him, impeccably dressed despite her age, watching every interaction with remarkable composure.
Even as a child, she carries herself like someone raised to inherit power. Every now and then Marcus says something to her, and she responds with a small nod before returning to quietly observing the room. I find myself watching her instead of him.
Back then, she had no idea who I was. She had no idea that while she was growing up beside one of the most powerful men in the world, another child was growing up because of him. She inherited an empire. I inherited the consequences of building it.
The report transitions into the same archival footage I've watched countless times over the past few months.
Marcus reaches across a conference table to sign an agreement. Before he does, Zora casually places a fountain pen into his hand.
I stare at the screen, every other sound fading into the background. I know that pen. I would recognize it anywhere. The handcrafted black resin. The intricate Italian silver engravings wrapped around the barrel. The aged platinum clip.
And engraved into the cap… The Valenti family crest. My family's heirloom.
I am a little boy again, standing inside my father's study while sunlight pours through the windows behind him.
Vittorio Valenti smiles as he opens a small wooden case resting on his desk.
Inside lies that very same fountain pen.
I remember reaching toward it with the curiosity only a child possesses, only for him to gently stop me before carefully placing it into my hands himself.
"Easy." He says with a quiet laugh. "Some things are earned before they're inherited."
My small fingers wrap clumsily around the pen while he steadies my hand from beneath.
"One day, when you're worthy, this will belong to you."
I look up at him with wide eyes. "Really?"
He smiles. "Really."
Then, after a brief pause, his expression turns unusually serious. "And if you ever see this pen in someone else's possession..." His voice is calm, but I'll never forget the certainty behind it. "...it will only be over my dead body."
The memory shifts before I can hold onto it. I remember watching him sign documents with that same pen, carefully wiping the nib clean before slipping it back into its case as though it were something sacred.
I remember falling asleep while he read beside my bed after another impossibly long day of work.
My mother died giving birth to me, leaving him to become both parents without ever making me feel like I was missing one.
No matter how demanding his responsibilities became, he always found time for me.
Looking back now, I realize how exhausted he often was, but I never once heard him complain.
He used to tell me that none of it mattered because one day we'd leave everything behind.
We'd disappear somewhere quiet, somewhere the Valenti name meant nothing, and he'd finally get to be just my father instead of everyone else's problem solver.
The television pulls me back to the present as Marcus signs the contract with my father's pen. A cold anger settles deep inside my chest. That pen is proof. Not that my father died. I already know that. It's proof that Marcus lied.
For years, Marcus fed me the same lie. He told me my father had been murdered by a rival organization and that honoring his memory meant finishing the war they had started. I believed him. I was a grieving child desperate for answers, and Marcus gave me one.
It wasn't until after his death, when I began digging through everything he'd left behind, that the truth emerged. My father hadn't been killed by our enemies. He'd been murdered because he wanted to leave.
Marcus refused to lose the man who had helped build the Krogen Empire, so he had him eliminated instead. The realization changed everything. He hadn't just stolen my father. He had stolen my grief and turned it into a weapon.
Every mission, every order, every drop of blood I spilled had been built on his lie. And by the time I uncovered the truth, Marcus was already gone, leaving behind only his empire... an empire that now belonged to Zora.
I swore that if I couldn't destroy Marcus himself, I would destroy everything he left behind. His empire. His fortune. His legacy. That promise became the foundation of my life. Every mission, every identity, every sacrifice served a single purpose.
Marcus had escaped my revenge by dying before I uncovered the truth, but his empire hadn't. I convinced myself that destroying everything bearing his name would be enough.
Then Zora entered my life.
I close my eyes, but the memories come anyway. Ireland. The island. The cave. I remember the way she refused to break, even when every instinct should have told her to give up. I remember her challenging me without fear, trusting her own convictions long before she had any reason to trust me.
Most of all, I remember watching her fight to survive on that island and realizing, far too late, that I had stopped keeping her alive for the mission alone. Somewhere along the way, without meaning to, I had started caring whether she lived or died.
Elysian Haven only made everything worse. Watching Zora with her family during the wedding, laughing without the weight of the empire on her shoulders, shattered the image I'd spent months building in my mind.
I had expected Marcus's daughter to be cold, entitled, and ruthless.
Instead, I found a woman trying to carry responsibilities she never chose.
And then there was me crossing that line with her which changed something I still can't put into words.
It blurred boundaries I'd spent years drawing and turned a mission I'd always approached with certainty into something far more dangerous.
Somewhere between all of these, she stopped being the daughter of the man I hated and simply became... Zora.
That's the part I can't reconcile. She had nothing to do with my father's murder.
She was as much a victim of Marcus's lies as I was.
Every rational part of me knows that. But revenge has never been rational.
If I destroy the Krogen legacy, I destroy her life with it.
If I don't, then what becomes of the promise I made to my dead father?
I rise from the chair and switch off the television, letting silence settle over the room.
The familiar words echo through my mind, the same ones I've repeated for months.
Marcus Krogen murdered my father. He built his empire on betrayal.
My revenge has always been bigger than my feelings.
It has to be. Because if I lose sight of that now, then everything I've sacrificed to get here has been for nothing.