Chapter Twelve: Feast Of The Jackals

CADE ESTATE 

Morning light slid across the Hudson like a blade, the kind of pale September sun that looked gentle until you stepped into it and felt the bite.

Inside a house of steel and smoked glass, Ethan Cade poured a second espresso and studied the woman lounging barefoot on his white-marble counter.

Sienna never hurried. She let her silk robe slip enough to remind him of everything they’d built and destroyed together.

The air between them tasted like ambition disguised as intimacy.

“New money,” she said at last, flipping a glossy portfolio across the counter. “Amara Voss. Guess where she hatched?”

Ethan scanned the dossier. “Zurich?”

“Close. Geneva. Parents owned a string of private banking houses. Old European cash married to new-tech investments. Both conveniently dead, plane crash in the Pyrenees six months ago. Left her an estate outside Lucerne and the controlling shares of Voss International. Two months later, she liquidates half the assets and relocates to New York.”

Sienna’s smile carried the glint of a knife. “She walks into the Cade Gala with a billion-dollar trust and a face no one recognizes.”

Ethan leaned against the counter, espresso bitter on his tongue. “Neat story.”

“Too neat,” Sienna said. “But the numbers check out. Paper trails, notarized wills, board confirmations. Someone did their homework.”

He tapped the file with one elegant finger. “Someone wants us to believe she’s exactly what she says.”

“Which makes her either a fool…” Sienna crossed her legs slowly, “…or bait.”

Ethan’s gaze lingered on her. “Either way, the estate alone is a gold vein. If we fold Voss International into Cade Global, that’s clean access to European banking. No regulatory noise.”

“And you love a quiet theft,” she teased.

He didn’t smile. “What do we know about her personally?”

Sienna flipped to a surveillance photo: Amara descending marble steps at the gala, black gown cutting like midnight. “Educated in Lausanne. No siblings. Only child of a discreet dynasty. Philanthropy, art acquisitions, the usual heiress distractions. There’s a whisper about a broken engagement in Monaco, but nothing sticks.”

“Clean,” Ethan murmured.

“Clean is a lie people pay for,” Sienna said. “And lies can be bought cheaper than truth.”

Ethan closed the file and set his cup down with a click. “We take it.”

Sienna arched a brow. “So simple?”

“She’s new blood with old money. She doesn’t know how deep this city cuts. We offer a partnership, a merger. Charm first, pressure second. By the time she smells the trap, her board will already vote our way.”

Sienna studied him, the ghost of a smile playing across her mouth. “You’re assuming she’s as stupid as Elara.”

The name hung in the air, heavier than the steam from the espresso.

Ethan’s jaw tightened. “Elara was wea and fragile. She trusted too easily and she paid.”

“You never wondered if—”

“Don’t,” he snapped.

Sienna tilted her head, eyes narrowing. “I was going to ask if you ever think of your son.”

He let the silence stretch until it turned cruel.

Then, flatly: “That child was a mistake. A bastard. I never wanted children with her. Things happened. I corrected them.”

Something in Sienna’s expression flickered—satisfaction or pity, it was hard to tell.

She slid off the counter, robe whispering around her. “Good. Because if Amara Voss is anything like Elara, she’ll fall right into our hands.”

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Down the hall, a door eased shut without a sound.

Carlo, the newly hired chef, paused just beyond it, heart hammering against his ribs.

He had moved like a shadow through Michelin kitchens, but nothing in his years of quiet precision had prepared him for what he’d just heard.

Not that he was new to secrets.

A few weeks earlier, a man with glacier-blue eyes and a woman swathed in bandages had arrived at restaurant in Italy.

They clearly did their assignments because they had leverage on him—his daughter.

They met again, the night before he was flown here to start as a chef. 

Damien Rhys—not the lady by his side, she never spoke, he didn't even know what she looked like beneath the bandages—told him 

“We need ears inside. No risk, just a little technology with your truffle oil.”

The woman had lifted her chin, and even through the faint veil of gauze Carlo had felt the weight of her stare.

“For my son,” she’d whispered for the first time.

They had paid him enough to buy his mother a house and pay for his daughter's treatments.

And they had given him a reason that felt like justice.

Now, in the mansion, he pressed two fingers to the slim device hidden inside his chef’s jacket.

The micro-recorder hummed to life, a silent witness.

He returned to the kitchen, knives gleaming under morning light, and began slicing fennel with the calm of a man preparing an execution.

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Sienna padded back to the living room where Ethan stood at the window. 

“How close do you want me to get?” she asked.

“Close enough that she believes you’re the only friend she has in this city.”

“And when she trusts me?”

Ethan’s smile was a blade. “We strip her clean. Estate, company, influence. Leave her a name with no house behind it.”

“And if she fights?”

“She will,” Ethan said. “They always do. But greed,”—he turned, eyes like frost—“greed is the one language everyone speaks. We’ll find her price.”

Sienna moved beside him, their reflections merging in the glass. “And if she’s not for sale?”

“Then we take it anyway.”

Outside, the sun climbed higher, washing the city in a deceptive gold.

Inside, the game tightened—two predators planning to feast on a woman they didn’t know was already sharpening her knives. On a woman who they both scorned and thought they got rid of.

In the quiet kitchen, Mateo slid the listening bug beneath the marble lip of the breakfast bar and thought of the woman with the storm-dark eyes.

He wondered how soon she would strike.

And he had a feeling it wouldn't be long now.