Cut By The Don Novel

Chapter 6 His world did not end quietly. I made sure of that. It exploded. I watched it all from the command center we'd established in the safe house. It was a symphony of destruction, and I was the conductor. Screens flickered around me. Live feeds from hidden cameras. Financial data streams ticking down. Encrypted communication lines buzzing with frantic activity. The first sign of impact was a sharp, high-pitched financial alert. A massive, coordinated freeze on Rossi Holdings' primary accounts. I allowed myself a thin, cold smile. The first domino had fallen. Precisely on schedule.

Marco stood beside me, a silent sentinel. His presence was a constant, prickling reminder that my salvation was built on a foundation of manipulation. "The regulators moved in faster than anticipated," he observed, his eyes scanning the data. "Your evidence package was... exceptionally persuasive. They couldn't ignore it. "It was meant to be," I replied, my voice flat, devoid of triumph. I had built Vincent's legitimate financial front with my own hands, my own mind. I knew exactly where to place the charges to bring the entire rotten structure down.

My personal phone buzzed, a separate, secure device. A single message from a blocked number. A pre-arranged signal from one of my grandfather's men, buried deep within the Rossi organization. It contained only two words: He knows. Minutes later, a video feed from a camera disguised as a smoke detector across from Vincent's villa flickered to life on a secondary monitor. The image was grainy, but the agony was crystal clear, etched in the harsh lines of his body. I saw Vincent stagger back from Luca, the paper in his hand-the fake medical records from Switzerland-fluttering to the floor.

He doubled over as if punched, his body convulsing. He vomited over his pristine terrace railing. The sound was muted, but his shoulders shook with a silent scream of grief and denial. 1/3 +25 Bonus A part of me, the ghost of the woman who had loved him, felt a distant, almost clinical pang of pity. It was swiftly crushed. I remembered the scent of Sophia's perfume on the stuffed rabbit. The feel of the cold concrete floor. The sound of his laughter as the temperature dropped. "He's seen the medical records from Zurich," Marco stated, his voice confirming what the video so vividly portrayed.

"Good." The word tasted like ashes and a bitter kind of victory. "Let him grieve. Let him believe, in his soul, that he killed me. It will make the next part so much more... poignant. It will unhinge him completely." We watched as Vincent's grief curdled into a blind, destructive rage. We saw his men scramble on other feeds, and we knew they would find only the ghosts we had left for them. Marco's clinic, scrubbed clean of all evidence.

The bodyguard, Antonio, who had dragged me to Sophia's room, eliminated as a loose end by my grandfather's efficient "cleaners." Every door he tried to kick down was already bolted shut from the inside. Then came the real masterpiece. A window on my screen showed Luca's phone lighting up, his face pale and strained as the calls came in-his captains reporting the chaos. I leaned forward, my eyes fixed on the live news feed from outside Rossi Holdings' headquarters. The swarm of police cars and regulators, the perfect, public execution of the warrant had helped draft.

It was a beautiful, devastating scene. A separate window showed a real-time financial ticker. The value of every Rossi- linked entity was plummeting in a terrifying, vertical red line. I had not just cut off his cash flow; I had doused his entire financial empire in gasoline and thrown a match. "He's in the car," Marco murmured, pointing to another feed. We watched Vincent's black sedan pull up a safe distance from the chaos, a predator forced to watch its den be destroyed.

I could imagine the feel of the cold leather under his white-knuckled grip, the taste of his own powerlessness like metal in his mouth. And then, the final touch. The personal knife in the public wound. I opened the file. 2/3 The photo, taken just an hour earlier in the morning sun: my wrist, slender and strong, adorned with the diamond necklace he had bought for Sophia. The stones glittered, cold and mocking. A direct message. I am here. I took this from you. I typed a short, simple message and attached the photo, sending it to the private, encrypted line I knew he carried on his person.

The message read: A souvenir. The first of many. The screen showing the live feed from his villa's terrace flickered again. He had stormed back inside, away from the public spectacle of his ruin. We saw him standing in his opulent office, staring at his phone. Even from that distance and through the low-resolution feed, I saw his body go rigid with shock. He saw the diamonds on my wrist, the undeniable proof of my survival and my theft. He read my message. He roared. A silent, furious hurricane on the screen.

And in one sweeping, catastrophic motion, he cleared his entire desk, sending computers, monitors, papers, and priceless artifacts crashing to the marble floor in an explosion of shattered glass and splintered wood. I watched the storm of his ruin, my own heart a calm, frozen sea. There was no joy. Only a profound, chilling satisfaction. "He's broken," Marco observed, his tone unreadable. I shook my head, my eyes never leaving the screen, never leaving the image of the man who had branded me like livestock, now drowning in the consequences of his own cruelty.

"No," I corrected softly, the architect surveying her controlled demolition. "Not yet. A broken man can be pieced back together. He is... unraveling. And we are just getting started."