Chapter 29 - Tangled Oaths

The silence between them was loaded, thick with the weight of too many truths buried too long. Raven stood at the threshold of Jaxon’s study, the man himself seated behind the massive obsidian desk that had once seemed like a throne to her, now, it was simply a barrier between them, what they were and what they might still become.

Her fingers trembled around the folder. That had lived in the hollow beneath her mattress like a parasite. Aset of documents that contained everything she’d stolen from his safe, everything she’d read and everything she knew.

She stepped forward and placed the file on the desk. "That's everything," she said, her voice low. "Everything I took and everything I know."

Jaxon didn’t move. Didn’t even blink. He looked at the folder the way someone might look at a live wire, too dangerous to touch, but impossible to ignore. "You kept it this long," he said.

Raven nodded. "Because I didn’t know who you really were. I still don’t, but I can’t keep playing both sides. I’m giving this to you because… because I choose you."

Something in his eyes flinched, too brief for most to notice, but Raven saw it, a crack in the steel. It wasn't rage, not even disappointment, just weariness.

He opened the file. Page by page, he turned through the evidence: the financial ledgers linking Club Eden’s offshoot to Eastern European trafficking rings. Offshore accounts tied to shell corporations. Shipment records that didn’t match anything Club Eden had legal licenses for. One of the documents bore Zane’s alias in a transaction note, R.K. Holdings, wired through a Dubai intermediary.

Jaxon exhaled slowly. When he looked up, his face had aged ten years. "This… I knew pieces of it," he murmured. "But not all, not this deep."

"Then why didn’t you stop him?" Raven asked.

He looked up. No fury in his gaze. Just something infinitely heavier. "Because I couldn’t. Not without breaking my mother."

Raven frowned. "Your mother?"

Jaxon rose slowly and moved to the wet bar. He poured himself a glass of scotch but didn’t drink it, just stared into it like it held a reflection he couldn’t face.

"You think Zane is the cancer, and maybe he is," Jaxon said. "But the bloodstream that feeds him runs straight from our mother’s hands."

Raven stiffened. "She funds him?"

"Not directly and not publicly, but yes." He turned. "When our father died, the board threatened to splinter. She needed someone ruthless enough to keep the Morreau legacy untouchable. I was supposed to be that person, but Zane, he’s the one she whispers to in the dark. He does what I won’t and in return, she lets him feed."

"On people," Raven said, her voice hollow.

Jaxon nodded.

"You let him live, even after you knew."

He closed the distance between them, slow and deliberate. "Because I thought I could control him, because I thought I could contain the rot long enough to cut it out without killing the entire body, but I failed."

Raven searched his face. "Then why not stop him now? Why not tell the world?"

"Because that ledger—" He tapped the folder. "—doesn’t just bring down Zane. It brings down the Morreau name. Our shipping lines, the board, the charities, the hospitals and the international accords tied to our diplomacy efforts. You burn this, and you don’t just take down a monster, you torch a dynasty."

"Maybe it deserves to burn."

Jaxon’s jaw twitched. "Maybe, but if it falls, you go with it."

Raven took a breath. Her pulse thundered in her ears. "Then let’s do it together. Quietly. Precisely. Without warning."

For a moment, Jaxon just stared at her. Then, impossibly, he smiled. It was a broken, dark thing, worn down by years of secrets, but it was real.

"You want to bring down my brother. You want to dismantle the corruption from the inside. You want to make sure the right people are held accountable, without leveling the entire world."

Raven nodded.

He stepped closer until they were nearly chest to chest. "Then you’ll need to trust me."

"Only if you trust me back."

His hand came up, brushing her cheek. "I never stopped, even when I should have. Even when I knew you were hiding something."

"So what do we do now?"

Jaxon looked past her toward the fireplace. Then he moved to the hearth, took a long breath, and opened the ledger from the folder, the one stamped with Zane’s mark. "We start with this," he said.

He held it out to her. A matchbox rested on the mantle. Raven took one, struck it, and stared at the flame.

It felt symbolic. It felt final.

She touched the flame to the ledger, and it curled inward immediately. Fire licked up the edge of the page, consuming names and numbers and signatures.

Jaxon stood beside her, watching the fire devour the past. "One page won’t save us," he said. "But it’s a start."

Raven nodded. "We’ll build the rest together."

The flames crackled louder. The smoke rose, curling in the air like the last of their denials. They said nothing more as the book burned, and the room filled with the scent of scorched truth.

Later that night after the fire was long out, the heat still lingered, Jaxon sat at the edge of his bed, shirt half-unbuttoned, the glass of scotch finally touched.

Raven paced. "We’ll need more than symbolic gestures," she said. "We need proof that Zane is still operating. That your mother’s complicit. That the funds are still moving."

Jaxon nodded. "I have a cleaner. Old school. He can trace the wire trails from Dubai, but it’ll take time."

"And in the meantime?"

"You go back to Club Eden, keep playing the part. Gather what you can,, but don’t get too close to Zane, he’s already fixated on you."

Raven’s stomach twisted. "He sent me a photo of Gabriel’s grave. Dug up."

Jaxon’s jaw clenched. "You should’ve told me sooner."

"I didn’t know how."

He stood, crossing to her. "You never have to hide from me again, no matter what he threatens you with, we will handle it together, or die trying."

Her breath hitched. "I’m scared."

He touched her chin, lifted it. "So am I, but we move anyway."

The following morning a flash drive arrived by courier. No markings. No return address. Inside were financial logs, more offshore transfers. A coded message: If you want more, meet me where it all began.

Raven showed it to Jaxon.

He frowned. "That’s Dante’s handwriting."

"You trust him?"

"No, but I trust his hatred for Zane."

"So we meet him?"

Jaxon nodded. "Together."

The war was beginning, not in gunfire, but in silence, smoke and shadows, and they were walking into it hand in hand.