POV: Xavier
The proof was a phantom, locked in a mountain on another continent. It was a lure, a promise, but not a weapon they could yet wield. To force his father’s hand, to make the threat of the Swiss vault real, they needed leverage here, now. They needed to connect Charlotte, inarguably and immediately, to the ghost.
They needed her DNA.
The idea was a moral oil slick in Xavier’s gut. It was surveillance, theft of the most intimate kind. It was treating a woman—a sister he’d never known, a victim of the same lie—as a piece of evidence to be collected. But the law moved slowly, and his father’s wrath moved like a scalpel. They needed a fait accompli, a piece of undeniable truth held in their hands, to short-circuit the coming legal siege.
“It’s the only play,” David Chen said, his
