---- Chapter 6 Anya Warner POV: The air in the room became so thick and still, | felt like | was breathing water. Marco Verratti, who moments before had been a preening predator, now looked like a statue carved from fear. His father, the head of the Verratti family, stood frozen by the grand fireplace, his face a ghastly shade of pale. The guards who had been holding me let their arms drop to their sides as if my skin had suddenly become molten lava. Silence. A heavy, suffocating silence broken only by the sound of my father' s ragged breathing. "Twenty years," he whispered, his eyes, my eyes, swimming with tears. "I've been searching for you for twenty years." Flashes of memory, fragmented and dreamlike, surfaced from the deep ocean of my childhood. A man's laughing face as he pushed me on a swing. The scent of sawdust and oil in a workshop filled with strange, wonderful machines. A lullaby sung in a low, gentle voice. My own voice was a trembling whisper. "Dad?" That one word was a key turning a lock that had been rusted shut for two decades. The tears in his eyes overflowed, tracing ---- paths down his weathered cheeks. He surged forward and wrapped me in his arms, holding me so tightly | could feel the frantic, desperate beat of his heart against my bruised ribs. He held me like he was afraid | would disappear again. "Get my daughter a doctor!" he roared, his voice bouncing off the high, ornate ceilings. It was not a request; it was a command that expected instant obedience. He was no longer a grieving father, but a titan of industry whose whisper could shake markets. The elder Verratti jolted into action, fumbling for his phone, his hands shaking so badly he could barely dial. "Get the medical team here! Now! The best! Get them here now!" he stammered. He scurried over, his face a mask of panicked obsequiousness. "Mr. Warner, sir, this is a terrible misunderstanding. If | had known she was your daughter-" My father cut him off with a look so cold it could have frozen fire. "If you had known?" he said, his voice dangerously soft. "So, you only extend courtesy to those you deem powerful? An unknown woman is fair game for your... hospitality?" Before Verratti could answer, my father' s security team moved with silent, lethal efficiency. They secured the room, their presence an overwhelming statement of power. A team of medics, clearly my father's own private staff, rushed in with equipment that looked more advanced than the local hospital's entire emergency room. ---- As they began gently tending to my injuries, my father stood over me like a sentinel. His gaze fell upon the Verratti patriarch and his son. "| will be launching a full investigation into your family's business practices," he announced, his voice echoing with absolute authority. "Every shell corporation, every offshore account, every dirty deal. | will uncover it all. And then | will decide whether to hand you over to the federal authorities or to deal with you myself. Pray that | choose the former." He didn't need to shout. The quiet threat was more terrifying than any outburst. He didn't even glance at them again. They were beneath his notice. He turned back to me, his expression softening instantly. "It's over, Anya," he murmured, his hand gently stroking my hair. "You're safe now. No one will ever hurt you again." They placed me on a stretcher. As they carried me out, my father never let go of my hand. My last glimpse of the room was of Hamilton, still standing in the doorway, his face ashen, looking at me as if he were seeing a ghost. And in a way, he was. The ghost he created, the ghost he used, the ghost he tried to discard, had just found a voice and a power he could never have imagined. As they loaded me into the waiting helicopter, the thrum of the rotors drowning out the world, | closed my eyes. The love | had felt for Hamilton Glass, a love that had defined my entire adult life, was finally, irrevocably, dead. And in its place, ---- something new and hard and cold was beginning to grow. | was no longer his ghost. | was a Warner. And the reckoning was just beginning.