Chapter 126: She was gone

Viktor’s plan had never involved a confession.

Instead, he’d made a few careful calls to old contacts within the local police men who owed him favors stretching back years, men who understood the value of looking the other way at the right moment and handing over the right evidence at the wrong one.

It had been simple enough, in the end, to arrange for Julian Fernandez’s body to be recovered and quietly delivered to his father through official channels, wrapped in just enough procedure to make it look like nothing more than routine police work.

Just as Sienna had suspected. The police had been the ones to clear the scene at the library that night, not out of ignorance, but because Viktor had made sure of it.

This way, whatever happened next, it would never trace back to him directly. A body handed over by law enforcement raised no questions about who had actually pulled the trigger.

Fabio received his son in a morgue, the body already zipped into a rubber bag, cold and final. His face didn’t crack. It didn’t need to. Fabio Fernandez was not a man whose thoughts ever surfaced where anyone could read them grief, rage, calculation, all of it locked somewhere far beneath the still, unreadable mask he wore like a second skin.

Back at the mansion, Viktor paced near the window, phone pressed to his ear, waiting for Marcus to call and confirm the girls had reached the Cross house safely.

Nothing came. No call, no text, nothing but silence stretching longer than it should have, and with every passing minute Viktor’s patience thinned further, frustration hardening into something sharper, more dangerous.

He barked out orders to a few of his men, sending them to quietly monitor any private planes or jets scheduled to leave the city that night a precaution born from instinct alone, the same instinct that had never once failed him.

That was when Fabio arrived.

He came with only a handful of men trailing behind him, none of the earlier show of force from the mountain cabin, walking instead with the measured calm of a man whose business here was already concluded.

"Well," Fabio said, stopping a few paces inside the compound, hands loose at his sides, "I have my son. Even though the police couldn’t tell me how he died."

A pause, something flickering briefly behind his eyes before vanishing again beneath that same unreadable stillness.

"Thank you. Thanks to you, I recovered his body. I never forget debts." He inclined his head slightly. "I’m leaving."

Viktor nodded once, his mind only half in the conversation, the rest of him consumed by the silence still hanging where Marcus’s call should have been.

"How is your wife?" Fabio asked, almost as an afterthought, though nothing about the man ever felt truly accidental. "Say hello to her for me. And apologize, if I frightened her."

Viktor nodded again, jaw tight, barely holding together the composure he needed to keep standing there and not simply turn and walk away to find his phone.

"And one more thing." Fabio’s voice shifted slightly, dropping into something quieter, almost conversational.

"Tell Don Capri I couldn’t stay longer not after the stunt pulled at his daughter’s wedding. He’s gone into hiding." A faint, humorless smile crossed his mouth. "Well. I hope we never cross paths again."

With that, he turned and walked away, his remaining men falling into step behind him, retreating from the compound as quietly as they’d arrived.

The moment the gates closed fully behind them, Viktor was already dialing Marcus again. And again. Each call ringing out longer than the last, each unanswered tone twisting the knot in his chest tighter.

Then, finally, headlights swung into the drive.

Marcus stumbled out of the car a moment later, a hastily wrapped bandage circling his head, blood staining faintly through the white gauze, his expression grim in a way that told Viktor everything he needed to know before a single word had even been spoken.

"Where the fuck is she?"

Viktor’s hand shot out and fisted in the front of Marcus’s shirt before the man had even fully steadied himself on his feet, hauling him close, his voice a low, dangerous snarl that carried none of the composure he’d worn only minutes ago in front of Fabio.

"Boss, it happened fast." Marcus’s words tumbled out unsteady, blood still seeping faintly through the bandage at his temple.

"A car crossed our path when we passed the underbridge. Everything went blank after the impact. When I opened my eyes, I only saw Aria unconscious and..." He trailed off, throat working around the rest of it like the words themselves were too heavy to say.

"And what?" Viktor’s grip tightened, knuckles whitening against the fabric.

"Mrs. Kessler." Marcus forced the words out at last, flinching as he said them. "She was gone."

"What the fuck do you mean she’s gone?" Viktor’s voice cracked through the compound like a gunshot, loud enough that a few of the men nearby froze mid-step, none of them daring to look directly at him.

"She was gone, boss." Marcus’s hands trembled now, whether from the crash or from the man currently gripping his collar, he couldn’t have said.

"She simply wasn’t there. I checked everywhere, I tried every road nearby, but there was nothing. I dropped Aria at the hospital and came straight back."

Viktor released him so abruptly Marcus stumbled backward, catching himself against the car door. For a long moment, Viktor simply stood there, chest rising and falling too fast, something raw and violent building beneath the surface of his usual iron control, threatening to break through entirely.

"Call the Gallon boys," Viktor said finally, his voice gone eerily quiet far more frightening than the shouting had been. He was already turning, already striding back toward the house, phone pressed to his ear before he’d even finished the sentence.

Marcus’s hand shook as he pulled out his own phone to make the call.

He knew exactly what those three words meant. The Gallon boys were not soldiers. They were not the disciplined, controlled men who guarded the mansion gates or drove the family through the city streets.

They were something else entirely Viktor’s most ruthless asset, men who moved through the underworld like a plague, killing without hesitation, without conscience, without ever once asking permission twice.