Chapter 9 - The Confession on the Water

"Let the girl go, Vanessa," I said, my voice dangerously steady despite the hurricane tearing through my chest. "The police know. The coroner's records are out. Judge Croft is done. The feds are raiding the trust accounts right now."

"My father owns the judges who will hear the appeal!" Vanessa shouted, her facade completely unraveling into pure, unhinged fury. "He built this entire region! Claire thought she could take a moral high ground over some missing ledger millions? She was a nobody! A museum clerk who got lucky marrying a trust-fund architect!"

"You pushed her down the stairs," I stepped forward, closing the distance to ten paces. "I saw the cloud footage."

Vanessa laughed—a high, screeching sound that echoed over the roaring storm. "She slipped, Mark! She was clumsy, just like this little parasite! When she fell, her neck snapped on the concrete. Do you know what she said before she stopped breathing? She begged me not to hurt Ilaria. And I promised her I wouldn't... as long as you belonged to me."

"You never loved me," I said, keeping my sightline fixed on her shoulder.

"Loved you?" Vanessa sneered. "You were a gullible, grieving idiot with fifty million dollars in commercial land holdings that my father needed to secure the corridor. Marrying you was the easiest business transaction of my life. But I couldn't stand her. Every time I looked at her, I saw Claire’s pathetic, righteous eyes."

"Daddy!" Ilaria screamed as a heavy wave splashed over her bare feet.

"Let her go, Vanessa. It's me you want."

"No," Vanessa smiled, her eyes widening with psychopathic delight. "I want you to live the rest of your life knowing that you failed both of them."

She opened her hands.

Ilaria plummeted toward the churning black water.

I didn't think. I fired twice.

The first bullet took the security guard pinning Sarah through the shoulder. The second struck Vanessa’s right knee.

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Vanessa shrieked, collapsing against the wooden railing, but Ilaria was already falling.

I threw the gun aside, lunged across the wet planks, and dove headfirst through the open hatch into the freezing black depths of Lake Moraine.