Page 12 of Dark Billionaire Predator

I said the crisis center. I mentioned the crisis center like it was something Ava had told me, and the moment the words left my mouth, I knew it was a mistake. Too specific. Too much. She caught it—I watched her catch it, watched the cold move through her, watched her file it away in whatever diagnostic architecture she carries behind those careful eyes.

She went inside. Locked the door. And I stood on her block like the predator I am and watched her window until the light went off.

I lie in the choir loft, staring at the dark ceiling, and force myself to pivot.

Lucy is the want. My father is the need.

***

By six, I'm at the desk I've set up in the transept—a slab of reclaimed oak on two sawhorses, buried under laptops, notebooks, and the growing pile of documents I've been accumulating since Vanderwal gave me the thread.

The St. Croix family. I've spent every spare hour of the past two weeks pulling at this, and what I've found is both more and less than I expected.

The public record is clean. Dominic St. Croix: philanthropist, investor, patron of the arts. Founded the Meridian Group, a private equity firm that manages old money for old families. Married Isabelle Renard in 1974. Five children. Died of pancreatic cancer five years ago, age seventy-one. Obituary in theTimes, memorial service at St. Patrick's Cathedral, the kind of send-off reserved for men who've spent decades cultivating the appearance of respectability.

The Brotherhood record is different.

Dominic was a founding family patriarch—equal in rank to my father, equal in ambition, joined at the hip for thirty years, and quietly trying to cut each other's throats for most of them. They built the modern Brotherhood together with Vanderwal, transforming it from a regional syndicate into something withreal reach and real power. Edward handled operations. Dominic handled money. Vanderwal held the balance.

It worked. For decades, it worked. And then, in the months before my father died, something changed.

I've pieced this together from fragments—old council minutes I accessed through Brotherhood archives, conversations with lower-level members who were around in those days, the kind of careful, lateral questioning that doesn't announce what you're really after. Nobody wants to talk about Edward Ambrose's death. It's ancient history, officially resolved, a heart attack that took a great man too soon. Asking about it directly would raise flags I can't afford.

So I ask about Dominic instead. About the relationship between the two families. About what the Brotherhood looked like in the year my father died.

What emerges is a picture of a partnership under strain. Dominic and Edward had been disagreeing—about expansion, about risk, about the Brotherhood's direction. Small fractures at first, the kind that get papered over in council meetings and smoothed out over whiskey. But by the end, people noticed. The two men who'd been inseparable for three decades were barely speaking.

And then there's the date on Vanderwal's paper.

October 14th. Three weeks before my father's heart attack. I've cross-referenced it against every record I can find—council meeting minutes, financial transactions, travel logs. What I've found: on October 14th, Dominic and Edward had a private meeting. No staff. No witnesses. No record of what was discussed.

After that meeting, according to three separate sources I've spoken to, the two men never spoke again.

Three weeks later, my father was dead.

I stare at the timeline I've pinned to the wall above my desk. Dates, names, connections—a web that's still mostly holes, but the shape of something is starting to emerge. Something happened between Dominic and Edward that was bad enough to end a thirty-year alliance. And three weeks later, one of them was dead.

The obvious suspect is Dominic himself. He had motive—whatever the argument was about—and means. He had Brotherhood resources, knew my father's routines, could have arranged a death that looked natural.

But Dominic is dead too. Cancer, five years ago. And here's what bothers me: pancreatic cancer is fast and brutal, but Dominic's decline was faster than expected. Diagnosed in March, dead by June. His own doctors expressed surprise at the speed, according to a medical source I leaned on.

It could mean nothing. Cancer is unpredictable.

Or it could mean that whatever killed my father eventually caught up with the man who ordered it. That there's a third player in this story—someone who wanted both patriarchs gone.

I write the question on a blank sheet and pin it to the wall:Who benefits from both deaths?

The answer that keeps surfacing: Ezra. Eldest son. The one who stepped into his father's shoes with a speed that suggested he'd been trying them on for years.

But there's another question underneath that one, smaller and harder to articulate. Something about Isabelle—Dominic's wife, the mother of all five children. She died too. I don't have details yet—when, how, whether it matters. But threedeaths in a single family's orbit start to look like a pattern. And patterns are what I'm trained to see.

***

I drive to the manor at noon.

The grounds look different in autumn—the trees stripped bare, the hedgerows thinning, the estate's bones showing through its usual lush facade. In summer, the manor hides behind green. In November, it stands exposed. I've always preferred it this way. Honest.

Gabriel is in the study, doing what Gabriel always does—managing the empire, one phone call and one decision at a time. He's on the phone when I arrive, speaking in the measured tone he uses with council members—warm enough to sound human, cold enough to remind them who's in charge. Poppy has left a cup of tea on his desk that he hasn't touched. It'll be cold by now. It's always cold by the time he gets to it—one of those small domestic tragedies that Poppy has learned to accept.