CHAPTER 127
JACK'S POV
I stood at the window of my penthouse apartment, watching the city lights twinkle below like stars. Somewhere out there, my daughter was playing at being a warrior, thinking she could challenge me with her three pet soldiers. The thought brought a smile to my face - not because I was amused, but because I was proud.
She'd finally become interesting.
"Sir?" My assistant, Marcus, entered the room carrying a tablet. "We have the surveillance reports from the warehouse incident."
I turned away from the window and took the device, scrolling through the security footage and incident reports. There she was - my little Skylar, infiltrating the facility like a professional. Her movements were confident, precise, deadly when they needed to be.
"She's gotten better," I mused, watching her pick the lock with impressive speed. "Much better than I expected."
"Should we be concerned?" Marcus asked. "She obtained significant intelligence about our operations."
I laughed, the sound echoing off the marble floors. "Concerned? Marcus, she just gave us the perfect opportunity. She knows about tonight's event, which means she'll try to interfere. And when she does, we'll be ready for her."
The truth was, I'd been growing bored with the slow approach William had insisted on. All this careful planning, this gradual manipulation - it wasn't my style. I preferred direct action, immediate results. But William had convinced me that patience would yield a better outcome.
Now, seeing what Skylar had become, I realized he'd been wrong.
"Contact William," I ordered. "Tell him we're accelerating the timeline. I want those three boys eliminated tonight, and I want Skylar taken alive."
"What about the auction? The VIP clients?"
"The auction proceeds as scheduled. Let our buyers have their entertainment while we handle family business." I moved to my desk and pulled out a thick file. "And Marcus? Make sure our friends in law enforcement know exactly where to find evidence of the boys' criminal activities. I want their deaths to look like gang retaliation."
Marcus nodded and left the room, already reaching for his phone. I opened the file and spread its contents across the polished wood surface. Photos of Skylar from childhood to present day, psychological profiles, medical records, academic transcripts - eighteen years of documentation that painted a picture of a girl who should have been broken beyond repair.
Instead, she'd become exactly what I'd always hoped she would.
You see, most fathers want their daughters to be soft, compliant, easy to control. But I'd never wanted a daughter who would submit meekly to whatever life handed her. I'd wanted to create something magnificent - a weapon disguised as a woman, beautiful enough to lower men's guards and deadly enough to destroy them.
The abuse, the trauma, the careful manipulation of her environment - it had all been designed to forge her into something exceptional. And while I'd miscalculated her attachment to those three boys, the end result was better than I'd ever imagined.
She'd become a killer who could still love. A predator who could still feel compassion. She was everything I'd wanted to be but had never quite achieved.
My phone buzzed with a text from William: "Package is ready for delivery. Confirm receipt location."
I typed back: "The warehouse. Make it dramatic."
Tonight would be the final test. If she could survive what I had planned, if she could overcome the obstacles I was about to place in her path, then she would truly be worthy of being my heir. And if she couldn't...
Well, then she was no daughter of mine after all.
I walked to my safe and removed a small wooden box, opening it to reveal the necklace that had belonged to her mother. Addison had worn it the night I killed her, and I'd kept it all these years as a reminder of what happened to people who tried to leave me.
But tonight, it would serve a different purpose. Tonight, it would be a message to Skylar about the choice she faced - become what I had made her to be, or join her mother in death.
The phone rang, interrupting my thoughts. "Yes?"
"We have eyes on the targets," came the report. "They're moving toward the warehouse district. Three vehicles, fully armed."
"Good. Let them get close, then spring the trap. I want to see how they handle overwhelming odds."
"And the girl?"
"The girl is mine to handle personally. No one touches her except to disable her. Anyone who harms her unnecessarily will answer to me."
I ended the call and returned to the window. Somewhere out there, Skylar was racing toward what she thought was a rescue mission. She had no idea that every move she'd made, every plan she'd formed, had been anticipated and accounted for.
But that was fine. The best lessons were always learned through bitter experience.
My reflection smiled back at me from the dark glass, and for a moment I saw Addison's features superimposed over my own. She'd tried to take Skylar from me once, tried to run away in the middle of the night with my daughter tucked safely in her arms.
I'd made sure that never happened again.
Now, eighteen years later, I was about to face the same choice - let Skylar slip away with her new family, or take back what belonged to me.
The outcome was never really in doubt. I'd spent too many years, invested too much time and effort in creating her to simply let her go. She could hate me, fight me, even try to kill me - none of that mattered.
What mattered was that she understood, finally and completely, that she was mine. She had always been mine. And no amount of love or loyalty from those three boys could change that fundamental truth.
My phone buzzed again. This time it was a photo message - Skylar, caught by a traffic camera, her face set in determined lines as she drove toward her destiny.
She looked exactly like her mother had at that age. Beautiful, fierce, absolutely convinced that love could conquer anything.
It was going to be such a pleasure to prove her wrong.
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