A Deal With The Devil’s Uncle

13: A House Built On Blood

Sebastian’s war room smelled of coffee and cold steel.

Maps, spreadsheets, and lists of shell companies covered the long table in the study, illuminated by a single lamp. The rest of the room was a cave of shadow and glass — a place where secrets were lit only long enough to be burned. Amara stood at the edge of it all, hands curled around a mug she didn’t remember pouring. She watched him move through the sheets like a surgeon, cutting away the fat until only the rotted bone remained.

“This is bigger than I thought,” she said quietly.

Sebastian didn’t look up. He traced a line between two offshore accounts on his laptop. “Bigger than even I expected. Eduardo’s reach isn’t just corporate greed — he’s built an entire ecosystem. Politicians, medical executives, transport networks. He’s turned desperation into profit.”

Amara swallowed. The memories of Darian’s casual request — You can give her one of yours — returned like a cold blade. Her hands tightened on the mug. “You mean… the organ thing?”

Sebastian’s jaw tightened. “Yes. Veronica found evidence that the company had been using its hospital affiliations to facilitate transplants outside legal channels. She confronted Eduardo. He silenced her and buried everything. Then he built the system to look like necessary charity. The poor were recruited under promises of help; the desperate were evaluated as donations — or commodities.”

Her breath came short. “So my surgery… it could’ve been—”

“A cog in their machine,” he finished softly. “Or worse. You were never going to be a donor for a private transplant. You were going to be a witness. A useful scapegoat if things went wrong.”

The word scapegoat made her stomach drop. “My life as evidence. My body as a receipt.”

Sebastian closed his eyes for a moment. “That’s why I had to bring you into this — to turn the weapon back on them.”

Amara wanted to be angry, to scream, to shove documents and computer screens away. Instead she found herself moving closer to the table, scanning names, dates, transport logs. One entry caught her eye — a reference code: Project Lazarus.

She pointed. “What’s Lazarus?”

He looked at the page. His face paled. “The code name for the transplant facilitators. Veronica called it that because she thought she could bring people back from the brink.” He laughed, a sound that had no humor. “Irony always tastes bitter.”

Sebastian keyed another file. Photos flooded the screen — shipping manifests, hospital consent forms forged with signatures, grainy surveillance from a warehouse. Amara’s stomach flipped. One photo was unmistakable: a van with the Cruz Holdings logo parked outside an unmarked building at three in the morning.

“This is proof,” she breathed. “This is what will destroy him.”

“It will,” Sebastian said. “But proof is only as strong as the person willing to deliver it.”

There was a pause — the kind of silence that asked dangerous questions.

Amara lifted the folder she still carried everywhere like a talisman. The file Veronica had left. The one that made her both target and threat. “If we take this to the press, Eduardo will retaliate. He’ll go for the people closest to us.”

“Which is precisely why we won’t be reckless,” Sebastian said. “We’ll move surgically. We expose the network, not only the man. We hit the banks, the shell companies, the clinics. We sever the routes, and we make him flinch.”

Her mouth worked around an answer. “And Darian? He—”

“He’s a wildcard,” Sebastian said. “Young, scared, and badly coached. He can be useful if we give him the right push — or dangerous if he chooses his father.”

Amara met his gaze. “Do we have allies?”

Sebastian’s eyes were cold and steady. “A few. Two journalists who owe the truth, a prosecutor who hasn’t been bought, and an old acquaintance of mine in customs who hates the way the world bends for the wealthy.”

A knock sounded at the door, brief and controlled. Celine slipped in, whispering a name: “There’s someone at the gate — an anonymous courier with coordinates and a key card. Said it was from a safe deposit box — cash — and a note: ‘For Mrs. Cruz. For when the house needs to know its foundations are rotten.’”

Sebastian’s lips thinned. He opened the envelope, pulled out a plastic key card and an address scrawled in a shaky hand.

Amara’s skin prickled. “We should check it.”

Sebastian hesitated, then nodded. “We do it tonight. Quietly. No press. No witnesses.”

They left the mansion hours later in a blacked-out SUV, the city sleeping under a blanket of rain-reflected lights. The address belonged to an industrial district — warehouses stacked like forgotten teeth along the docks. A single light burned in a row of corrugated steel buildings.

They parked half a block away and walked, anonymity cloaking them. Sebastian’s hand was near his coat, always ready. Amara’s pulse drummed in her ears as they approached the entrance. The key card clicked, and the heavy door sighed open.

Inside, the air was cold and sterile. Rows of metal shelving held crates stamped with generic medical supply codes. A single light hung over a table where a man sat hunched, his face obscured. On the table lay bank boxes and another folder — identical to the one Amara carried.

“You’re late,” the man rasped.

Sebastian’s face hardened. “Who are you?”

The man lifted his head. The light revealed eyes rimmed with fatigue and a jaw clenched against fear. “I worked for Veronica,” he said. “She trusted me. She knew this would come. She made me hide the ledger.”

He pushed a small box toward them.

Amara opened it with trembling fingers.

Inside were ledger books so thick they made her hands ache — account numbers, payees, coded names. Names of hospitals, transport companies, and individuals. Each entry a line in a long, black ledger of lives bought and sold.

At the very back, nested between receipts, Amara found what made her blood run cold: a name she knew — not a stranger, but a familiar face from the gala. A name that connected the charity donors, the shell companies, and the nights in empty hospitals —

Celeste Hollingsworth.

Her breath stopped.

Sebastian’s head snapped up. “She’s involved.”

The thump of boots echoed outside — too late.

Someone had followed them.

A shadow slid across the doorway; the man who’d met them had stiffened. “They know this place,” he said. “They’ll come for the boxes.”

Behind them, the warehouse door began to rattle.

Amara’s hands went numb. The ledger burned in her palms like a confession.

Sebastian’s voice was a razor. “Grab everything. We move. Now.”

They ran into the night, ledger in hand, chased by the roar of engines and the low, terrible certainty that the house built on blood had just begun to crumble — and that when it fell, it would crush everyone who’d built it.