Chapter 471 Not Enough

Julian’s POV

He had asked too many questions already. I was not ready to give him the kind of answers that would follow him to school.

Katia was in bed when I came back. The lamp was on. She watched me undress like she was taking inventory of the mood I had brought into the room.

“You called everyone,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Good.”

I sat on the bed.

“I keep seeing Noah in that chair,” I said. “He wanted credit for showing up. He wanted mercy for what he would not say. I don’t have mercy left for that.”

“Then don’t give him mercy. Give him a boundary.” She reached for my hand and put it on her stomach. “This is the boundary. If he crosses it by keeping the wrong thing from you, he loses the benefit of the doubt.”

“He may have already crossed it.”

“Then we find out. We don’t burn the house down on a guess.”

I looked at her.

“You are calmer than I am.”

“I am angrier than I look. I am also pregnant and tired of people treating my life like a message they can send to you.” Her fingers tightened around mine. “So you do what you have to do. Squeeze Elliot. Watch Noah. Keep Aiden close. And you come home. That last part is not optional.”

“I’ll come home.”

She studied me a moment longer.

“Do you think Elliot will stop?”

“No.”

“Then we don’t wait for Noah’s conscience to grow up.”

“No,” I said. “We don’t.”

I turned off the lamp. In the dark I could still see the shape of the next days. Extra cars. Changed routes. Quiet pressure on Vesper holdings. A cousin I could no longer read the way I wanted to.

Elliot had sent a warning through his son and expected me to stand still while Noah wrestled with blood.

I would not stand still.

If Elliot came again, I intended to be in the way first. And if Noah kept standing in the middle with his mouth shut, he would have to live with the fact that I had already chosen my family over his silence.

Marcus came into my office with a folder thick enough to mean he had found something I would enjoy hurting.

I did not tell him to sit. He sat anyway. That was how this worked. He brought the ugly part. I decided how much blood the ugly part was worth.

“You told me to pull every company under Elliot,” he said. “I did. You’re going to like this in the way you like a broken bone that finally shows on the scan.”

“Talk.”

“Vesper Group is a year old. Pretty offices. Pretty gala. Pretty lie. It is not the first company. It is a shop window.”

I leaned back. “Then show me the store behind it.”

He slid the first page across the desk.

Halcyon North Holdings.

Twelve years older than Vesper. Quiet registration. A country that looked respectable until you followed the directors.Nominee names. Same lawyers Elliot used when he wanted a room with no windows and no witnesses.

“This funds Vesper,” I said.

“Every cent that matters,” Marcus said. “Payroll. The launch. The offices. That fake investment pool he walked around selling like holy water. Vesper looks rich because Halcyon keeps pouring into it. Cut Halcyon and Vesper dries out. Not in a year. In weeks.”

I tapped the page.

“Then that is where we hit him.”

Marcus did not smile.

“There is a reason he never put Halcyon on a stage. The thing is dirty.”

“How dirty?”

“Dirty enough that he cannot scream if someone squeezes it. Halcyon moves restricted weapons parts through shell buyers. It shifts sanctioned fuel under paperwork that would not survive a second look. It washes cash through consulting invoices that never had a real service behind them. None of that sits in Vesper’s public books. All of it sits underneath, feeding the pretty new name he wore to that gala.”

I closed the file before I started enjoying the details too much.

“So if I choke Halcyon, he cannot run to the press and cry that Julian Windsor attacked his honest work.”

“Correct. He would have to explain what the honest work actually is. He would rather swallow glass.”

“Good. I want him swallowing.”

Marcus watched me.

“You are sure it was him. The car.”

“Yes.”

“We still do not have his name on the order.”

“I do not need his name in gold leaf. I have a method that matches my parents. I have a contractor paid through a firm in his orbit. I have his son in my office delivering a threat and looking like he might vomit from the rest of it. That is enough for me to stop treating this like a puzzle I have to solve politely.”