Chapter 5 - The King's Realization
Silence descended upon the study like a crushing weight.
Dante slowly lowered the phone from his ear, his dark eyes fixed on Evelyn as if he were seeing a complete stranger.
“What did she just say?” Evelyn whispered, her voice barely audible over the sound of rain beating against the windows.
Dante didn't answer right away. He walked behind his desk, opened his private computer terminal, and pulled up the encrypted file sent directly from Dr. Harrison’s laboratory.
Evelyn walked around the desk, leaning over to look at the screen.
On the screen was a complex DNA comparative tree.
At the top of the tree was a photo of a man with silver hair, sharp blue eyes, and an air of ancient, absolute nobility—Marcus Vance, the legendary founder and supreme leader of the Vance Syndicate.
Below his name was a direct bloodline link leading straight to a high-resolution photograph of Evelyn Hart.
Match Probability: 99.9% - First-Degree Direct Lineage (Daughter).
Evelyn stared at the screen, her head spinning, the room tilting violently beneath her feet. “No... no, that’s wrong. My father was Arthur Hart. He was a history teacher...”
“Julian Vance was not your father,” Dante said softly, his voice devoid of its usual harshness. He looked at her with a terrifying mixture of shock and realization. “Julian was Marcus Vance’s younger brother. When the mob war broke out twenty years ago, Marcus’s wife was assassinated. To protect his newborn daughter, Marcus secretly gave you to his brother Julian to raise under a fake identity in Queens.”
Evelyn backed away from the desk, grabbing her head as a wave of nausea hit her. “No... no! My life isn't a lie! My mother loved me! We lived in a tiny apartment! We were poor!”
“Your 'mother' was Julian’s wife, paid to act as a decoy to hide the most valuable bloodline in the criminal underworld,” Dante said, standing up slowly.
He took a step toward her, the entire dynamic between them shifting in an instant.
Evelyn wasn't the daughter of a low-level rat who had died penniless in Europe.
She was the direct, sole heiress to the Vance Empire—a global syndicate worth tens of billions of dollars, with private armies stationed across Europe, Asia, and South America. She was the royal blood of the only family powerful enough to wipe the Bellamy Syndicate off the face of the earth.
“Fifty million dollars,” Evelyn whispered, a breathless, hysterical laugh escaping her lips as she looked up at Dante. “You paid fifty million dollars to buy a orphan waitress to torture her... and you accidentally bought the daughter of the King of Europe.”
Dante stared at her, his jaw tightly clenched. For the first time since she had met him, Dante Bellamy looked genuinely unsettled.
If Marcus Vance discovered that his long-lost daughter was being held captive as a servant in the Bellamy estate, it wouldn't just mean a lawsuit or a turf dispute.
It would mean total, unholy war. The entire East Coast would burn to the ground.
Before Dante could speak, the warning sirens of the estate began to blare throughout the mansion.
Red emergency lights flashed across the ceiling of the study.
The heavy mahogany doors burst open, and Marcus, Dante’s chief enforcer, rushed into the room with a submachine gun in his hands, his face pale with horror.
“Boss!” Marcus yelled over the deafening sirens. “We have an emergency at the perimeter gates! Three armed gunships just entered our airspace, and fifty black armored vehicles have completely surrounded the estate grounds!”
Dante moved instantly, stepping in front of Evelyn to cover her with his own body. “Whose forces are they?”
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Marcus swallowed hard, looking at Evelyn with absolute terror in his eyes.
“They aren't local, Boss,” Marcus whispered. “They’re flying the black crest of the European Vance Syndicate. Marcus Vance is here. And he wants his daughter back.”
