Chapter 20 - The Phone Call That Changed Everything
Ren stood alone in the dark basement archive room, holding the fading letter and the Irish passport in her shaking hands.
The air in the subterranean vault felt freezing cold, her chest tight as the massive weight of the secret crushed down on her mind.
Damian had spent twenty-two years believing he was completely alone in the world—believing his father was a tragic hero who died building an empire for him.
His entire life, his cold obsession with perfection, and his fear of losing precious things had been shaped by the grief of losing his mother at four years old.
If she handed him this letter, it would destroy his memory of his father, but it would give him a mother and a sister he never knew existed.
Ren’s cell phone suddenly buzzed in her dress pocket, breaking the eerie silence of the archive room.
She pulled out her phone and looked at the glowing screen; it was a private video call incoming from an unlisted international satellite number in Dublin, Ireland.
Her heart hammered wildly in her throat as she took a deep breath, her finger hovering over the green answer button.
She slid her thumb across the glass, bringing the phone up to her face as the video stream connected through the dark basement cell signal.
The screen flickered to life, revealing an older woman with silver-blonde hair and piercing dark grey eyes sitting in a sunlit cottage garden.
The woman looked into the camera, her eyes instantly locking onto Ren’s green eyes with a mixture of shock and desperate, emotional recognition.
“Ren Ashby?” the woman’s soft, Irish-accented voice came through the phone’s speaker.
“Please... tell me my son Damian is still holding the twenty-second floor.”
Ren opened her mouth to reply, her breath catching in her throat as a shadow appeared in the basement doorway behind her.
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The game was far from over.
The real story was just beginning.
