The bourbon spilled first—warm and biting, seeping into the cuff of his shirt and bleeding across the corner of the contract displayed on-screen—but the blood followed soon after, threading in thin, precise lines between his fingers.
He didn't flinch.
Instead, with a motion as fluid as it was practiced, he reached for the monogrammed handkerchief folded neatly in his breast pocket and began to wipe the blood from his palm—slowly, with the same elegance one might use to dust ash from a lapel, not hurried, not angry, just… finished.
Then he returned to the tablet.
And that was when he saw it.
Not loud. Not flagged. Not even particularly well hidden.
Secondary Custodial Transfer Clause.
If the omega fails to produce a viable heir by the age of twenty-five, full rights of contract—including bodily custody, reproductive access, and relocation authority—shall pass to the designated secondary party (see Appendix II: Codename Faceless Agatha).
Faceless Agatha.
Not a title. Not a noble house. Not even a person, as far as the archives showed. Just a placeholder, the kind that meant whoever it was had bought their anonymity with enough power to bury legal markers and still sit at the negotiating table.
Someone who didn't want Lucas seen. Someone who didn't want credit—only access. And someone desperate enough to wait for more than ten years for him.
His fingers hovered over the tablet screen, the glass glowing faintly beneath the low light, lines of clinical cruelty still staring back at him in cold, unblinking font—and in that moment, Christian understood something about Misty he hadn't before, something that slipped past all the cleverness and vanity and social silk she wrapped herself in like armor: she was far more dangerous than he had ever believed.
Not because she was ruthless.
Not because she was cunning.
But because she was greedy in the way only a mother with no love left could be.
Greedy enough to sell her son.
Not once. But twice.
And God only knew how many more times she might have tried if she hadn't finally been caught in her own paper trail of forged consent and falsified records.
She had turned Lucas into a commodity, wrapped in stillness and sealed with scent blockers and legal fiction, polished and perfected just enough to pass through every room undetected—until he didn't.
Until he looked back.
Of course the boy was protected now.
Of course the house that claimed him had locked its doors, circled its wagons, and buried him behind silk and stone and guards with better instincts than contracts.
Because this—what lay before Christian now—wasn't just manipulation.
It was abuse. Chemical. Psychological. Possibly physical, if the timing matched what the records implied.
And Christian—he—had been set up as the smiling buyer at the end of that chain.
Had Misty respected the original terms, had she honored the contract they agreed to—formal courtship, awakening by certified means, a controlled transition, and medical transparency—none of this would have happened.
Lucas would have been his.
Properly. Cleanly. Publicly.
There would have been no scandal.
No blood. No Fitzgerald. No Faceless Agatha.
Just a boy who could have belonged to him—not out of obedience, not as a contract fulfilled, but as something earned, something grown, something real.
Christian rose from his chair, slow and precise, the ache in his palm pulsing faintly beneath the stained handkerchief still clutched in one hand.
He moved to the fireplace—unlit, cold—and stared into the unbroken black, the kind of void that once reminded him of patience, of silence as a strategy.
Now it reminded him of what could've been.
Sometimes, in the quieter parts of planning, he had imagined it: taking Lucas under his wing slowly, letting the boy awaken not to hormones or legal terms, but to the idea of permanence. Letting him grow into his own power on his time, with his consent.
It wouldn't have been hard.
Lucas was sharp, elegant, already carved by hardship into something rare.
He would've been magnificent.
If Christian had waited. If Misty hadn't interfered. If anyone had given the boy a chance to choose.
He should've listened to his instincts.
He had felt it—that the delay wasn't only legal. That something was being hidden, shaped, and scrubbed.
And now, it had cost him the clean path.
The sanctioned path.
But it hadn't cost him the endgame.
He turned from the fireplace and returned to his desk, pressing the single embedded button on the leathered control panel beneath the glass surface.
The line connected immediately.
He didn't wait for pleasantries.
"Freeze all of Misty Kilmer's accounts," he said, his voice low, sharp, unshakeable. "Every single one of them. Personal. Corporate. Off-books. I want locks on every card, every wire path, every debt margin she's leveraged in the last six years.
He tapped the screen again, bringing up a separate folder—one he hadn't opened in months.
A list of assets.
Transfers. Gifts. Grants. Loans without a name.
She had always known how to ask.
Always with the right blend of desperation and praise, always one breath short of begging, but never quite slipping into humiliation. She knew exactly how far to kneel before it cost her pride.
And he—back then—had let her.
Because it had cost him nothing.
But now?
Now every coin felt like a signature on the abuse he had just read.
"Revoke every gift tied to my name," he said. "Properties. Cars. The account she uses for her daughter's tuition. If she wrote a receipt on a napkin, I want it pulled."
The assistant's voice wavered slightly. "Sir, this will escalate—"
"Good," Christian cut in, eyes still on the screen, gaze like a scalpel pressed to flesh. "Let her feel it in her spine."
He didn't pause. Didn't give room for argument.
And inform the court," he added, his tone slipping into something colder now—something legal. "About our contract. The clean one. The original terms, with my approval and signature. Not the modified version she submitted later."
A beat of silence.
The assistant on the other end hesitated, breath catching faintly through the receiver.
Then—quietly, efficiently—the line shifted.
A new voice. Aaron. The chief secretary.
Trusted for a decade. Trained to act only when the storm began to turn.
"Do we initiate legal action?" Aaron asked, his voice calm, clipped, entirely devoid of shock.
Because Aaron had seen this before—not Christian like this, perhaps, but what came after a voice like that. What happened when men who held power stopped asking questions and started issuing sentences.
Christian didn't look away from the screen.
He reached down and folded the bloodstained handkerchief with slow, meticulous care—corner to corner, silk to silk, like a ritual.
"Yes," he said.
Then, without blinking:
"Under the statute for contractual manipulation and medical negligence. File it publicly. Let the press get wind of it. If Serathine D'Argente is implicated, then the court already has all the versions of the contract; we had signed officially only one. The rest will be proved as forgery."
His voice didn't shift in tone.
It didn't need to.
Because Christian Velloran wasn't just declaring war—he was laying the groundwork for a public execution conducted entirely on parchment and principle.
Aaron said nothing at first.
Just silence, respectful and precise, the kind that only comes from someone who understands they are no longer taking dictation but enacting a verdict.
Then, after a beat:
"Consider it done, sir. Do you want the press notified directly or anonymously?"
Christian looked out the window now, toward the lights of the upper city. Where names like Kilmer still opened doors. Where silence could still be bought. Where truth was often only as loud as the money behind it.
"Anonymously," he said, at last. "For now. Let the public suspect. Let the whispers build. She'll panic before she pivots—and I want her unbalanced when she does."
Another pause.
Then, quieter:
"And Aaron—begin a quiet inquiry into the codename Faceless Agatha. If Misty named them, she left a trail. Find it. And when you do—don't tell me."
Aaron didn't ask why.
"Understood," he replied. "The damage begins today."
Christian ended the call.
And the war began in silence.