novelraw Chapter 254: A Bad Apple Falls Under the Tree
Chapter 254: A Bad Apple Falls Under the Tree
Thick ribbons of grey smoke curled lazily into the dark, conditioned air of Damien’s home office.
The Sinclair Penthouse was utterly silent. Down the hall, safely tucked into the center of the massive king-sized bed, Aria was fast asleep. The quiet peace of the apartment was a stark contrast to the storm currently raging inside Damien Sinclair’s mind.
He sat behind his organized mahogany desk, shrouded in shadows.
He was dressed in nothing but a pair of low-slung grey sweatpants. His silver hair was slightly messy, falling effortlessly over his forehead. A pair of wire-rimmed reading glasses rested on the bridge of his nose, the harsh, blue glow of his laptop screen reflecting sharply in the lenses.
To his right, sitting next to a half-empty pack of cigarettes, was a crystal tumbler filled with two fingers of amber scotch.
He took a slow drag of his cigarette, his golden eyes narrowing as he scrolled through the dossiers Ken had compiled and sent an hour ago.
The files belonged to Leonardo and Jade Evans.
On paper, their background was a masterclass in sympathetic tragedy. They were the perfect, unassuming victims of circumstance. According to the public records, they had lost their parents in a classic, devastating car accident over a decade ago. With no other family willing to step up, they had been raised in the foster system until their sickly, maternal aunt took them in.
It was a flawless, heartbreaking narrative designed to make anyone with a pulse feel pity for them.
But Damien didn’t look at feelings.
He tapped his keyboard, pulling up the aunt’s financial history.
The woman was a ghost in the system, but her tax returns painted a very clear, very bleak picture. She had worked a string of minimum-wage retail jobs her entire life. She owned no property. She had no offshore accounts, no hidden trust funds, and no substantial life insurance payouts from the deceased parents. Her net worth was practically nonexistent.
Damien took a sip of his scotch, the smoky liquid burning a pleasant trail down his throat.
He swiped back to Leo and Jade’s educational records.
His jaw tightened.
Both siblings, despite being raised by an aunt living below the poverty line, had somehow attended L’Institut de Valmont for their school education.
Damien was intimately familiar with Valmont. It was an elite, notoriously exclusive private boarding school tucked away in the French Alps. It was an institution reserved exclusively for European royalty and old-money dynasties. The tuition alone cost hundreds of thousands of Euros a year, and admission required a pedigree that money couldn’t even buy.
"How interesting," Damien whispered to the empty room, a dark, cynical smirk curling his lips.
He opened their current employment profiles. Leo was a nineteen-year-old newbie actor who had just secured his first major casting in The Empress’s Shadow. Jade was listed as an independent contractor doing basic temp administrative work around the city.
Yet, despite this incredibly modest combined income, the two of them were supposedly crashing in a residential suite at Sinclair Tower while their "house" was being renovated.
Sinclair Tower was one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in Manhattan. The cheapest, basic-tier room on the residential floors cost thousands of dollars a night. Not even their combined annual salaries could afford a weekend stay in that building, let alone a long-term lease during a renovation.
The math was entirely fabricated.
Damien set his cigarette in the crystal ashtray.
He had suspected Jade since the beginning. There was always something off and pretentious about her. But he hadn’t suspected the goofy, overly enthusiastic kid who was Aria’s biggest fan boy.
Damien leaned back in his leather chair, staring at the smiling headshot of Leo Evans on his screen.
It was the "bad fruit" principle. If you have a bowl of apples and one of them is rotting, the rot doesn’t stay contained. It spreads. If one piece of fruit in a pair had gone bad, it was an undeniable guarantee that the other was rotting from the inside out too.
Leo’s "golden retriever," hyper-innocent persona wasn’t just a personality trait. It was a flawless cover.
Damien was certain.
They were a pair of sleeper agents for who else other than the Vipers?
They had meticulously, patiently planted agents right next to her on a movie set months in advance. They had been watching her, studying her, and embedding themselves into her daily life right under Damien’s nose.
The sheer audacity of it made Damien’s blood run ice-cold.
Bzzzzzzzt.
The sudden vibration of a phone rattling against the mahogany desk shattered the silence of the office.
Damien’s phone was lying face-down near his laptop.
He glanced at the digital clock on the top right corner of his computer screen.
2:28 AM.
For a split second, Damien’s heart executed a brief, hopeful flutter against his ribs. His immediate thought was that Aria had woken up, noticed he was missing from the bed, and was calling to tell him to come back to sleep.
He reached out and snatched the phone off the wood, flipping it over with a sliver of genuine warmth in his chest.
The bright screen illuminated his face.
Caller ID: Kai Vane
The softness vanished almost as fast as it appeared.
The disappointment of seeing his friend’s name instead of his wife’s instantly translated into hostility.
Damien’s jaw locked. He aggressively swiped the green button, accepting the call, and hit the speaker icon before tossing the phone back onto the desk.
"This better be an emergency involving my wife or my company," Damien warned, his voice a low, cold drawl that promised violence if the answer wasn’t satisfactory.
Static crackled through the speaker for a second.
"It involves Aria by extension," Kai’s voice echoed into the dark office.
Damien went perfectly still. He slowly reached out, his long fingers wrapping around the crystal tumbler. He brought the glass to his lips, taking a slow sip of scotch.
"I’m listening," Damien said.