CHAPTER 133
WILLIAM'S POV
The penthouse overlooked the harbor, its floor-to-ceiling windows offering a panoramic view of the city where my carefully constructed empire had just crumbled to ash. I stood with a glass of thirty-year-old scotch in my hand, watching the smoke still rising from the warehouse district, and felt something I hadn't experienced in decades.
Genuine surprise.
"Sir?" Marcus approached cautiously, tablet in hand. "The final reports."
I took the device without turning away from the window. Seventeen facilities compromised. Two hundred and thirty-seven assets lost. Forty-three associates arrested. And at the center of it all, Jack Mitchell - dead, along with any hope of recovering my investment in his twisted daughter.
"She did this," I said, more to myself than to Marcus. "A nineteen-year-old girl brought down an operation it took me fifteen years to build."
"The federal task force..."
"The federal task force was led there by intelligence she gathered. Don't try to minimize what happened here, Marcus. I was outplayed by a child."
I scrolled through the surveillance footage from the warehouse, watching the final moments before Jack's bomb had torn through the building. There she was - Skylar Mitchell, moving with lethal precision as she saved the hostages while my son and his friends eliminated Jack's security team.
She'd grown into everything Jack had claimed she would become. Beautiful, deadly, absolutely ruthless when necessary. But unlike her father, she'd retained something Jack had lost long ago - the capacity for genuine love and loyalty.
That made her infinitely more dangerous than Jack had ever been.
"What are our options?" I asked, setting the tablet aside.
"Liquidation and relocation," Marcus replied immediately. "I have accounts in Switzerland, safe houses in South America. We can be gone by morning."
"And leave them to destroy everything else I've built? Let them turn my own son against me permanently?" I laughed, the sound bitter even to my own ears. "No, Marcus. Running isn't the solution here."
"Then what do you propose?"
I turned away from the window and walked to my desk, where detailed files on all four targets lay spread across the polished surface. Psychological profiles, financial records, relationship analyses - everything I'd need to predict their next moves.
"Jack made a fundamental error," I said, picking up Skylar's file. "He tried to break her, to remake her in his own image. But you can't break something that's already been shattered and rebuilt stronger."
"I don't understand."
"She's not Jack's daughter anymore, Marcus. She's something new. Something that combines his ruthlessness with genuine human connection. And that makes her capable of things Jack never imagined."
I moved to the wall safe and input the combination, retrieving a small wooden box I'd hoped never to open. Inside, nestled in black velvet, was a photograph - Skylar at age five, smiling at the camera with innocent joy. Beside it lay a legal document bearing Jack's signature.
"The contract," Marcus breathed.
"The contract," I confirmed. "Jack sold her to me, Marcus. Legally, binding, witnessed by three attorneys and notarized. Whatever she's become, whatever power she thinks she has - she still belongs to me."
"But sir, after everything that's happened..."
"After everything that's happened, she's proven her value beyond Jack's wildest projections. A weapon that can love, Marcus. A killer with a conscience. An assassin who inspires absolute loyalty." I closed the box and returned it to the safe. "She's not a problem to be eliminated - she's an asset to be acquired."
Marcus looked uncomfortable, shifting his weight from foot to foot. "The FBI raids, the arrests..."
"Will be dismissed or overturned on technicalities within six months. I still have judges, prosecutors, politicians in my pocket. Evidence can be lost, witnesses can be discredited or eliminated, charges can be dropped for lack of jurisdiction." I returned to my desk and began organizing the files. "The question isn't whether I can survive this setback - it's whether I can turn it into an opportunity."
"How do you mean?"
"Lucas betrayed me, but he's still my son. Somewhere under all that righteous anger, he still wants my approval. Harry and Jax are weapons I trained myself - their loyalty can be redirected if the right pressure is applied. And Skylar..." I picked up her photograph again, studying the determined set of her jaw. "Skylar is exactly what I need to rebuild the organization into something greater than it was before."
"She'll never cooperate willingly."
"Of course not. But cooperation can be engineered. Jack understood the basics - leverage through fear, control through isolation. But he lacked subtlety. He used a hammer when a scalpel would have been more effective."
I moved to another safe and withdrew a file marked with Skylar's name in red letters. Inside were photographs, documents, records that Jack had never known existed.
"What is that?"
"Insurance," I said simply. "Jack thought he knew everything about his daughter's past. He was wrong."
The photographs showed a younger Skylar - maybe eight or nine years old - standing beside a woman I'd had killed years ago. A social worker who'd gotten too close to discovering the truth about Jack's operation. But before her death, she'd gathered evidence. Evidence about other children, other victims, other crimes that could destroy lives beyond counting.
"Skylar thinks she's fighting to save innocent people," I continued. "But what if she discovered that her actions were putting other innocents in danger? What if she learned that by destroying my network, she'd exposed dozens of children to even worse fates?"
Marcus was beginning to understand. "Blackmail."
"Motivation," I corrected. "Give her a choice between serving me willingly or watching innocents suffer for her defiance. Make her believe that cooperation is the only way to protect the people she cares about."
"And if that doesn't work?"
I smiled, feeling the familiar thrill of a plan coming together. "Then we remind her that contracts can be inherited. Jack is dead, but his debts remain. And the most valuable item in his estate is about to learn exactly what it means to be owned."
I walked back to the window, looking out at the city where my enemies thought they'd won a decisive victory. But they'd made a critical error - they'd assumed that destroying my organization would end the game.
They didn't understand that for men like me, setbacks were just opportunities to become more creative.
"Marcus," I said without turning around. "Send word to our contacts in law enforcement. I want to know everything about the task force that conducted those raids. Every agent, every prosecutor, every witness."
"Yes, sir."
"And Marcus? Start making inquiries about a certain safe house in the warehouse district. I believe my son and his friends are about to discover that their hiding place isn't as secure as they think."
As my assistant hurried from the room, I raised my glass in a silent toast to the distant smoke still rising from Jack's funeral pyre.
"Game, set, and match," I murmured. "But the tournament is far from over."
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