Chapter 18 - THE HAND THAT PULLED HIM BACK
Camilla held the wheelchair with both hands.
The front wheels hung above the flooded chamber.
Victor looked up at her.
The position mirrored the pier.
Only this time, she was pulling instead of pushing.
“Help me,” she shouted.
Mateo reached the other handle.
Together, they dragged Victor away from the edge.
Gabriel ran toward the loading platform.
Detective Fournier followed.
Roman remained on the floor holding his injured shoulder.
He looked at Camilla.
“You should have let him fall.”
Camilla stared at Victor.
“I already did that once.”
Police captured Gabriel near the outer dock.
He carried the damaged drive in his coat.
The bullet destroyed the connector but not the internal memory.
Forensic specialists could recover the final files.
Camilla sat against the office wall.
She did not attempt to escape.
Victor moved his right foot deliberately.
Mateo saw it.
“You moved.”
Victor looked down.
The movement was weak but real.
Camilla noticed.
“Armand said you would never walk.”
“Armand lied about many things.”
Her eyes filled with something Victor could not identify.
Relief.
Regret.
Perhaps fear of what his recovery would mean.
Police treated Roman’s wound.
Gabriel refused medical attention.
He continued insisting that everything he did protected his son.
Roman looked toward him.
“You never protected me.”
“You gave me your hatred and called it an inheritance.”
The words silenced Gabriel.
Detective Fournier approached Camilla with handcuffs.
Camilla looked at Victor.
“I saved you.”
“At the shipyard.”
“Yes.”
“You also pushed me from the pier.”
“I know.”
“Saving me once does not erase trying to kill me.”
“I know.”
She did not ask for forgiveness.
She held out her hands.
Fournier placed the cuffs around her wrists.
Victor watched her leave.
He felt the strange emptiness of a person reaching the end of revenge and discovering it could not restore what existed before betrayal.
Marcel arrived under police escort.
He had agreed to identify the recovered files.
He looked at Roman.
Then at Gabriel.
The two fathers stood on opposite sides of the warehouse.
One had been blamed for a child who was not his.
The other had turned his own son into a weapon.
Marcel faced Victor.
“The network is finished.”
“No.”
“The accounts remain.”
“We have the files.”
“The people behind the accounts have money, influence and time.”
Victor looked toward the open dry dock.
“Networks do not disappear because one warehouse is raided.”
“They disappear when no one can profit from silence.”
He ordered Elena to release the first ninety-eight percent of the vault archive publicly.
Detective Fournier warned that publication could complicate prosecutions.
Victor agreed to withhold protected witness information.
Everything else would become visible.
Isabelle’s financial approvals.
Gabriel’s communications.
Laurent’s transfers.
Roman’s operations.
Marcel’s smuggling agreements.
Victor would not protect the company by hiding the truth.
Moreau Maritime’s stock collapsed within hours.
The board demanded Victor resign.
Employees protested outside ports.
Governments suspended contracts.
The empire Victor survived to reclaim was falling apart.
Elena asked whether he regretted the release.
Victor looked down at his moving foot.
May you like
“No.”
“For the first time, the company is losing exactly what it deserves.”
