Chapter 4 - Isabella Met Both Parents

Damian returned downstairs.

Isabella stood exactly where he had left her.

Her father beside her.

Her grandfather still sitting near the stage.

Damian held up the photograph.

“You met my father.”

Isabella’s face lost color.

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Eight months ago.”

“Where?”

“Vienna.”

“Why?”

“My father sent me.”

Damian looked at Mr. Voss.

The older man did not look away this time.

Damian turned back to Isabella.

“You met my mother five months ago.”

“Yes.”

“My father eight months ago.”

“Yes.”

“And never told me either was alive.”

Isabella started crying.

“Yes.”

Harold came down the stairs behind Damian.

Lucia stayed upstairs.

Damian asked:

“What did my father tell you?”

Isabella swallowed.

“That he wanted to come home.”

“Then why didn’t he?”

“He said he needed the ledger first.”

Damian frowned.

“The one in the clock?”

“Yes.”

“What was in it that mattered so much?”

Isabella’s father answered.

“Names.”

Damian looked at him.

“Whose?”

“People still alive.”

“People who could destroy both families.”

Damian laughed once.

“So that was the real fear.”

Mr. Voss shook his head.

“No.”

Damian stared.

“Then what?”

The man pointed toward his eighty-six-year-old father.

“The ledger proved our fathers were not only stealing together.”

Damian looked at the old man.

Harold spoke quietly.

“They were partners in something else.”

“What?”

“Property seizures.”

Damian frowned.

Isabella answered:

“They forced people to sell businesses.”

“How?”

“Threats.”

“Blackmail.”

“False debt.”

“Court orders.”

Damian looked toward his own grandfather’s portrait above the stage.

His grandfather had died six years earlier.

Respected.

Feared.

Powerful.

Now dead.

Still controlling the room.

Damian asked:

“And my father?”

Isabella looked down.

“He helped carry out some of it.”

Silence.

Damian’s jaw tightened.

“My mother discovered the money.”

“Yes.”

“My father knew where some of it came from.”

“Yes.”

“And both disappeared.”

“Yes.”

Damian looked at Isabella’s father.

“You wanted the ledger before they returned.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because if regulators saw it before we separated clean assets from old ones, everything would freeze.”

Damian’s expression hardened.

“You wanted time.”

“Yes.”

“Three months.”

“Yes.”

Damian looked at Isabella.

“And you helped him.”

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She whispered:

“Yes.”