Something had stirred him. Provoked him. Scraped against whatever grudge he’d been nursing in the dark.
The question was why now; what changed.
Marcus didn’t need money. He wanted vengeance.
Vengeance, David knew from bitter experience, didn’t come in clean kills. It didn’t come in swift and merciful. It came in pieces. Slow turns of the screw. Psychological warfare designed to break the target from the inside out.
Lena was so strong, yet so vulnerable. She kept fighting despite the terror clawing at her. The realization that Marcus was responsible for that terror turned his stomach. Her voice, with its undertone of fear as she told him what happened, echoed in his mind.
He thought of the others. Kate, with her laughter and warmth, always ready with a kind word. Nick, steadfast and dynamic, the backbone of their family.
Marcus threatened everything they held dear, all they’d built together.
David ground his teeth until they ached.
He pushed out of the chair with more force than necessary, his spine popping in three places as he straightened. The sudden movement made his vision swim for a second, dark spots dancing at the edges. He braced himself against the desk until the dizziness passed, then walked across the room to the wall where he was pinning everything.
The conspiracy board—that’s what Lena had named it when he first put it up, teasing him with that trademark sass even though her eyes had been worried. Lines of thread stretched across the surface like a spider’s web, red and black crisscrossing in patterns that would look like madness to anyone who didn’t understand the connections. Names. Dates. Faces half in shadow, lifted from grainy security footage. Bank transfers. Flight records. Property deeds. Phone logs.
Now, at the center of it all, Marcus stood alone.
David printed the man’s most recent photo—a corporate headshot from some charity gala three months ago. Marcus looked older than David remembered, silver threading throughhis dark hair, but those eyes were the same. Piercing. Calculating. The eyes of someone who saw people as chess pieces.
David’s jaw clenched harder. He pinned the picture in the center of the wall. It fit, the heart of the spider web, everything radiating out from it.
They’d been playing a game without having the rules for too long. Dancing to music they couldn’t hear while Marcus orchestrated every note.
That ends now.
He sank back into his chair and with a few quick keystrokes, activated the worm he’d had ready for ages, waiting for a target. It would follow Marcus’s trail, find his server, and copy everything. They needed information to stop him.
He grabbedhis phone from the desk, fingers moving with precision despite the tremor of exhaustion and adrenaline running through them. He opened the group chat with his brothers and typed out a message.
His thumb hovered over the screen.
Once he sent this, there was no going back. No more pretending this was business. No more half-measures or cautious investigations. This was war, and Marcus had already fired the first shot.
David thought of Lena again. Of Nick. Of Kate. Of everyone at the resort who trusted them to keep them safe. His resolve hardened, the exhaustion fading into the background as a fierce determination took its place.
He hit send.
Found him. We need to meet. Boardroom now.
The message was delivered with a whoosh, and David set the phone down on the desk, his hand steady.
For the first time in weeks, he knew what he was fighting. Who.
That, somehow, made all the difference.
His mind raced with the next steps. They needed a plan, a way to counteract every move Marcus had made so far and might be planning. They had to be on the same page, unified and ready for whatever Marcus threw at them next.
David drummed his fingers on the slick desktop and took a deep breath, letting calm settle over him. This was only the beginning; the first step in a long and arduous journey. A renewed sense of purpose welled up.
The name Marcus Sinclair mocked him from the notepad. He picked up the pen, circled the name again, then ripped the page out, crumpling the paper.
By moving Chester against Lena, Marcus showed he wasn’t targeting one or two of them. He was targeting them all, trying to dismantle their unity, their strength. That was a mistake. Marcus underestimated them and the bonds that bound them.
They would rise to this challenge, of course. Zach, Nick, Lena, Kate—they were more than names on a page. They were family, and family fought together, stood together, conquered together. That was something it was unlikely Marcus understood.
