Chapter 11 - The Ghost in the Shadows
The man who stepped out of the dark corner of the study was impeccably dressed in a tailored charcoal suit, his face obscured by the dim lighting.
He held a suppressed pistol with the casual elegance of a seasoned killer, the barrel pointed directly at Adrian’s chest.
Adrian did not flinch, his cold eyes locking onto the intruder while his mind calculated a dozen different ways to survive the next ten seconds.
The intruder smiled, a thin, cruel expression that did not reach his dead, empty eyes.
He introduced himself as Silas, the chief enforcer for Julian Vance, a man whose name commanded sheer terror in the international underworld.
Silas explained that Julian was a man who took what belonged to him, and he currently laid claim to both Caroline and the little girl who shared her blood.
Adrian slowly leaned back in his leather chair, his hand subtly sliding toward the hidden emergency button under the mahogany desk.
He asked Silas why Caroline had waited eight agonizing years to reveal she was still breathing, choosing to stay dead while he mourned her.
Silas chuckled softly, a sound like grinding glass, and revealed that Caroline had never loved Adrian, nor did she care about the child.
Eight years ago, Caroline had staged her own assassination to escape Adrian’s overbearing control and steal a massive fortune in offshore cryptocurrency.
However, she recently discovered that the largest portion of Adrian’s wealth, a five-billion-dollar trust fund, was biometrically locked to their daughter.
The trust required a living scan of Lily’s retinas and fingerprints on her tenth birthday, which was exactly two weeks away.
Adrian’s blood boiled as he realized his supposedly tragic wife had sold out her own infant daughter for a payday.
Without warning, Adrian kicked the heavy mahogany desk forward with a sudden, violent surge of his newly recovered leg strength.
The massive piece of furniture slammed into Silas’s knees, throwing the assassin off balance and sending his suppressed gunshot wild into the ceiling.
Adrian lunged across the shattered desk, his hands wrapping around Silas’s throat with the raw, brutal strength of a man defending his family.
He slammed the assassin’s head against the stone fireplace, rendering the man completely unconscious before he could pull the trigger again.
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Adrian stood over the bleeding enforcer, his chest heaving as the terrifying reality of his situation settled over him.
The Wolf of the West Coast had just been dragged back into a war, and this time, the enemy was the ghost of the woman he once loved.
