Chapter 5 - The Crown Has a PriceThree days without spreadsheets lasted exactly eleven hours.
At 6:43 the following morning, Khloe stood barefoot in Dante’s kitchen wearing one of his white dress shirts and holding a tablet in one hand.
Dante entered from the bedroom and stopped.
He wore black trousers but no shirt, and his hair was still damp from the shower.
For several seconds, he simply stared at her.
Then his gaze moved toward the tablet.
“No.”
Khloe did not look up.
“Good morning to you too.”
“I specifically said three days.”
“And I specifically agreed because you were kissing me at the time, which makes the contract legally questionable.”
Dante approached the island.
“What happened?”
That made her look at him.
The playfulness disappeared.
“Someone purchased seventeen percent of Gallo Maritime overnight.”
Dante became still.
Gallo Maritime was one of the legitimate pillars of their expanding organization. It controlled freight contracts, warehouses, trucking companies, and nearly forty percent of the containers moving through their section of the port.
No outside investor was supposed to own more than three percent.
“How?”
“Six investment firms.”
Khloe rotated the tablet.
“Different jurisdictions. Different directors. Different banks.”
“But the same buyer.”
“I think so.”
Dante took the device.
The companies had names designed to be forgotten.
Northstar Capital.
Horizon Atlantic.
Briar Holdings.
Three more were registered in Delaware, Nevada, and Luxembourg.
“What makes you think they are connected?”
“The purchases occurred within ninety seconds of one another.”
Khloe folded her arms.
“And each company used a bank that clears international transfers through the same institution in Geneva.”
Dante looked at her.
“You discovered this before seven in the morning?”
“I woke up at five.”
“You were sleeping at five.”
“I was pretending.”
His expression hardened.
“Why?”
Khloe hesitated.
That hesitation frightened Dante more than the financial attack.
During the six months since the Blake war, she had become nearly impossible to surprise.
She anticipated labor disputes, federal inquiries, political betrayals, and assassination attempts with the same cool concentration she once reserved for scheduling meetings.
But something had disturbed her.
“Khloe.”
She walked toward the windows.
Morning sunlight spread across the city.
“I received an envelope yesterday.”
Dante said nothing.
“It was delivered to the office.”
“Who delivered it?”
“No return address.”
His voice became colder.
“And you did not tell me?”
“I thought it was nothing.”
“You do not think anything is nothing.”
Khloe turned.
That was true.
She crossed the room and opened her handbag.
From an interior pocket, she removed a cream-colored envelope.
Dante saw his own name written across the front.
Not printed.
Handwritten.
He opened it.
Inside was a photograph.
Khloe at age sixteen.
She stood outside a small house beside an older woman Dante recognized from photographs as Khloe’s grandmother.
Both were smiling.
On the back were seven words.
A queen should remember where she came from.
Dante’s face became unreadable.
“When did this arrive?”
“Yesterday afternoon.”
“And you spent the night beside me without mentioning it.”
“I wanted to know what it meant first.”
“It means someone photographed a photograph.”
“Yes.”
“From where?”
Khloe swallowed.
“My grandmother’s house.”
The house had been empty for years.
After her grandmother died, Khloe’s sister inherited it.
No one lived there.
Dante placed the photograph carefully on the counter.
“Your sister?”
“In Ohio.”
“Call her.”
“I already did.”
“Is she safe?”
“Yes.”
Dante reached for his telephone.
Khloe caught his wrist.
“Do not send fifty armed men to Ohio.”
“I was thinking twenty.”
“Dante.”
“Fifteen.”
She almost smiled.
Almost.
Then the elevator chimed.
Both turned.
Miles entered.
He had returned to active duty after several months overseeing western operations.
The moment he saw their expressions, he understood that something was wrong.
“What happened?”
Dante handed him the photograph.
Miles read the message.
His face changed.
“Where did this come from?”
“Find out.”
Dante walked toward the bedroom.
“Quietly.”
Miles nodded.
“No one approaches Khloe without clearance.”
“I am standing right here,” Khloe said.
Dante returned wearing a shoulder holster.
“That is why I said it while standing directly in front of you.”
“You are impossible.”
“And you are underestimating a threat.”
Khloe approached him.
“No.”
Her voice softened.
“I am trying to understand one before we create ten more.”
Dante stared at her.
This had become the central tension of their partnership.
Dante eliminated danger.
Khloe dissected it.
He believed survival came from striking first.
She believed power came from knowing where to strike.
Neither had been wrong yet.
Miles’s telephone vibrated.
He looked at the screen.
Then again.
A second message.
His eyes narrowed.
“What?”
Dante asked.
Miles looked toward Khloe.
“We have another problem.”
He held out the telephone.
A photograph showed Donovan lying unconscious beside his vehicle.
Blood covered one side of his face.
Khloe’s stomach dropped.
“Is he alive?”
“Yes.”
Miles scrolled.
“He was found ten minutes ago outside the Port Authority building.”
Dante took the telephone.
“No wallet missing. No watch. No weapon.”
“Then robbery was not the objective.”
Khloe already knew.
Miles nodded.
“There was an envelope inside his jacket.”
He opened another image.
The message consisted of four words.
YOU TOOK WHAT WAS OURS.
The room became silent.
Khloe looked at Dante.
“The Blakes?”
“Dead.”
“Most of them.”
Dante’s eyes sharpened.
Khloe understood his thought.
Organizations did not die when leaders died.
They fragmented.
Soldiers disappeared.
Accountants changed names.
Children grew older.
Widows remembered.
Someone had waited six months.
Someone had watched Khloe transform the Gallo organization.
Someone had watched Dante consolidate the city.
And now that person had decided to collect a debt.
“We need to know who survived,” Khloe said.
Dante picked up his jacket.
“We do.”
“No bodies.”
He looked at her.
“I did not say anything.”
“You were thinking loudly.”
Miles covered a smile.
Dante ignored him.
Two hours later, the conference room on the forty-third floor contained every senior member of the Gallo organization.
Donovan participated through video from a private hospital room.
His left eye was swollen shut.
“I did not see them coming.”
His voice carried humiliation.
“There were three. Maybe four.”
“Description?”
Carter asked.
“Professional.”
“That is not a description.”
“It is when you have spent twenty years being attacked by amateurs.”
Donovan shifted painfully.
“They knew exactly where the cameras were. They disabled my vehicle remotely. One approached from the front to keep my attention. Two came from behind.”
Khloe stood beside a digital board.
“What did they ask?”
“Nothing.”
“What did they say?”
Donovan hesitated.
“One thing.”
Dante leaned forward.
“What?”
Donovan looked at Khloe.
“They said the secretary should never have been given a crown.”
Every man in the room became quiet.
Dante’s chair moved backward.
Khloe placed one hand on his shoulder before he could stand.
The gesture was gentle.
The effect was absolute.
Dante remained seated.
Khloe faced Donovan.
“Anything else?”
“No.”
“Then this is about me.”
Dante’s jaw tightened.
“No.”
“It clearly is.”
“It is about reaching me through you.”
Khloe looked at him.
“That distinction stopped existing six months ago.”
No one contradicted her.
She turned toward the board.
“I want every Blake employee, contractor, relative, shell company, attorney, accountant, driver, and girlfriend mapped.”
Carter began taking notes.
“Go back fifteen years.”
Miles raised an eyebrow.
“Fifteen?”
“People do not wake up one morning with the ability to acquire seventeen percent of a shipping corporation and assault Donovan without leaving evidence.”
Khloe looked around the table.
“This person has money, patience, intelligence, and access.”
She tapped the board.
“That means they were never a street soldier.”
Dante watched her.
“What are you thinking?”
Khloe drew a line beneath one name.
Sebastian Blake.
The room changed.
Carter frowned.
“Old man Blake’s son?”
“His youngest.”
Miles shook his head.
“Dead.”
“Are you certain?”
“Car accident in Switzerland eight years ago.”
“Body?”
Miles stopped.
Khloe looked at him.
“Was there a body?”
No answer.
She turned toward Carter.
“Find the death certificate.”
He opened his laptop.
Thirty seconds later, his expression changed.
“There is one.”
“Who signed it?”
“A physician named Henri Beaumont.”
“Search him.”
More typing.
Carter looked up.
“He never existed.”
Dante rose slowly.
The room seemed to shrink around him.
Khloe stared at Sebastian Blake’s photograph.
He was thirty-four in the image, handsome in the polished, expensive way of men who had never needed to raise their voices.
According to official records, he had died at thirty-six.
If alive, he would now be forty-four.
Old enough to understand patience.
Young enough to want revenge.
Khloe enlarged the photograph.
Sebastian stood beside his father at a charity gala.
His smile was pleasant.
His eyes were not.
“He did not survive the Blake organization,” Khloe whispered.
“He escaped it.”
Dante moved beside her.
“And now he wants it back.”
“No.”
Khloe looked at the seventeen-percent ownership figure.
“He could have attacked our warehouses. He could have killed Donovan.”
She looked at Dante.
“He deliberately left him alive.”
Understanding passed between them.
“This is not a war yet,” she said.
“It is an invitation.”
At 4:00 that afternoon, the invitation arrived.
Not electronically.
Not by courier.
A black Rolls-Royce stopped directly outside Gallo headquarters.
One man exited.
He wore a gray suit and carried no visible weapon.
Security surrounded him before he reached the revolving doors.
He did not resist.
“I have something for Miss Bishop.”
Five minutes later, Khloe stood in the lobby with Dante beside her.
The messenger held out a black envelope.
Dante took it first.
The man smiled.
“Mr. Blake anticipated that.”
Dante’s eyes became lethal.
“Where is he?”
“You will know when he wishes you to know.”
Dante moved.
Khloe caught his arm.
“Let him finish.”
The messenger’s smile widened slightly.
“He said you were intelligent.”
Khloe took the envelope.
Inside was a key card.
The logo belonged to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Beneath it was a handwritten message.
MIDNIGHT.
COME WITHOUT DANTE.
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY YOUR GRANDMOTHER DIED.
Khloe read it twice.
The blood drained from her face.
Dante saw it.
“What?”
She handed him the card.
His expression changed.
Khloe’s grandmother had died twelve years earlier.
Officially, it had been a heart attack.
Khloe had been twenty.
She had never questioned it.
Until now.
Dante tore the card in half.
“You are not going.”
Khloe stared at the message.
“Yes.”
“No.”
She looked at him.
“If Sebastian Blake knows something about my family—”
“He is using your grief.”
“Maybe.”
“He wants you separated from me.”
“I know.”
“Then why would you give him exactly what he wants?”
Khloe moved closer.
“Because he thinks I am still the woman who hid inside a bathroom and called you to save her.”
She took the torn pieces of the card from his hand.
“He thinks separating me from you makes me weak.”
Her eyes became cold.
“Let him discover his mistake.”
Dante’s face revealed something deeper than anger.
Fear.
Not fear for himself.
Never that.
Fear of losing the one person who had become more important than his empire.
“I cannot protect you if you walk into his trap alone.”
Khloe touched his cheek.
“You taught me something six months ago.”
“What?”
“When someone threatens what you love, you do not run.”
Her thumb moved across his jaw.
“You make them regret choosing it.”
Dante covered her hand with his.
For several seconds, neither spoke.
Then he lowered his forehead against hers.
“You are not going alone.”
“The message says—”
“I do not care what the message says.”
Khloe almost smiled.
“I assumed you would say that.”
Dante narrowed his eyes.
“What did you do?”
She removed her telephone.
A building schematic appeared.
“I already acquired the museum’s security contractor.”
Miles coughed behind them.
Dante stared.
“You bought the company?”
“Technically, one of our holding companies bought sixty-one percent.”
“When?”
“Seven minutes ago.”
Dante looked toward the ceiling as though asking an indifferent God for patience.
Khloe slipped the telephone into her pocket.
“So I will walk inside alone.”
Her expression hardened.
“But I will own every camera, every door, every alarm, and every piece of glass surrounding Sebastian Blake.”
She took Dante’s hand.
“He invited the secretary.”
May you like
A slow smile appeared on her face.
“The queen is going instead.”
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