Page 142 of Secret Heir

I focus, thankful for the softball question. “Cultured. Educated. His Russian accent is refined, and upper-class. He chooses his words carefully and there’s a slight pause before he emphasizes important points.”

“And the other voice?”

I close my eyes, pulling up the memory. “Rougher. Less educated. The accent was different—I didn’t recognize it at the time, but now I realize what it was. It was a Corsican accent.”

“You’re certain?” Nikolai presses.

“Yes. The pronunciation, the cadence—it matches what I’ve heard from the Corsican operatives who’ve been questioned.” Maksim had let me hear some of the recordings but stopped them before I heard the torture.

“We have security footage from that night.” Nikolai gestures, and another screen descends from the ceiling.

I know what’s coming. This is the footage that got Maksim to finally believe my story. Grainy black-and-white footage appears on the screen to show the warehouse interior. The timestamp in the corner: 9:33 p.m..

I watch myself from eight years ago—heart in throat—crouch behind the crates. Then Maksim and Alexander with the accountant. The execution. Maksim leaving.

The footage continues. Alexander stands alone for a moment, checking the body.

Then at 9:41 p.m., a second figure enters from a side door. My breath catches as the man I heard but couldn’t see clearly walk in. The footage is crappy enough that facial features are unclear, but his presence is undeniable.

“Someone else was there,” Nikolai says quietly, letting the footage speak for itself. “After Maksim left a second man entered the warehouse and spoke with Alexander for approximately ten minutes.”

The council members lean forward, watching intently.

On screen, I can see Alexander and the other man talking. Their body language is conspiratorial—heads close together, Alexander gesturing as he speaks. At one point the other man laughs, clapping Alexander on the shoulder.

Triumph rushes over me and it takes everything in me to not look over at Alexander and stick my tongue out at him. This is exactly what I described.

“Miss Delano testified that she heard Alexander discussing plans to move against me with another person,” Nikolai continues, still looking like he’s won everything. “She heard this conversation clearly. Some of you questioned whether she might have been mistaken, whether there even was another person present.”

He pauses, letting the footage play.

“The evidence shows she was telling the truth. Someone else was there. And that someone was conspiring with Alexander.”

Alexander’s face has gone blank. His earlier confidence is cracking.

“But who is this person?” the thin council member asks, squinting at the screen. “The image quality isn’t good enough for identification.”

“We’re working on enhancement,” Nikolai says. “But even without identification, the footage proves several critical things: First, Miss Delano was telling the truth. There was a second conspirator. Second, Alexander lied when he claimed to be alone.”

He pauses then adds something I didn’t expect.

“But there’s more.”

My head snaps toward Nikolai. More? What more could there be?

“After this in-person meeting concluded,” Nikolai continues, “at 9:55 p.m., a call was made from Alexander’s phone to a number in Marseille, France.”

The council members sit up straighter and I stare wide-eyed at Nikolai, who looks smugger than I’ve ever seen him. My heart pounds. I didn’t know about a phone call. I couldn’t have known as I fled the warehouse as soon as I thought it was safe.

“The call lasted seventeen minutes.”

He projects the phone records onto a screen that descends from the ceiling. I can see the entries with dates, times, durations, and numbers.

I stare at it all in shock, a buzzing in my ears as low murmurs from the council echo in the room. Nikolai refused to tell me what evidence he had, saying he needed my testimony to be pure, not influenced by what investigators found

“A seventeen-minute call to Marseille—to a known Corsican operative named Jean-Luc Benedetti—while you were supposed to be securing a crime scene,” Nikolai says coldly.

Alexander’s mouth opens then closes. For the first time, he looks genuinely rattled.