James Whitfield stood in his Manhattan office, watching surveince footage of Alexander talking to Camille, Stefan, Hannah, and Victoria at the event, he saw the look of remorse on Alexander''s face. His hands gripped the edge of his desk so tightly his knuckles turned white as he watched Alexander talk to them, and betray everything they had built together.


    "Twenty years," James whispered to the empty room. "Twenty years of nning, and this weak-minded fool throws it all away for a woman who destroyed his uncle."


    The rage burning in James''s chest felt familiar,fortable even. He had carried this anger for so long it had be part of his identity, as essential to his existence as breathing. But watching Alexander coborate with the enemy brought that fury to a boiling point that threatened to consume everything in its path.


    James turned away from the surveince screens and walked to the wall where a single photograph hung in an expensive frame. The image showed a man in his fifties wearing a business suit, standing proudly in front of a construction site. The man''s smile was genuine, his posture confident, his eyes bright with the satisfaction of honest workpleted well.


    "I''m sorry, Dad," James said to the photograph. "I''m sorry it''s taken me so long to get justice for what they did to you."


    The photograph showed Thomas Smith, a contractor who had built half the schools and hospitals in upstate New York before Victoria Kane and Richard Pierce destroyed his life. James touched the ss covering his father''s face, remembering the strong hands that had taught him to use tools, the patient voice that had exined how buildings were constructed tost for generations.


    Before Victoria Kane turned his father into a criminal.


    James closed his eyes and let the memories wash over him, painful as acid but necessary to fuel his determination. Twenty years ago, Thomas Smith Construction had beenpeting for thergest municipal contract in the state''s history - a new hospitalplex that would employ hundreds of workers and establish the family business for the next generation.


    Thomas Smith had submitted a fraudulent bid based on substandard materials and exploited immigrant workers who couldn''t report safety vitions. Victoria Kane and Richard Pierce had submitted an honest bid that exposed Thomas Smith''s illegal practices when they reported him to the authorities.


    When federal investigators discovered Thomas Smith''s criminal enterprise, they found evidence of years of fraud, bribery, and safety vitions. Workers had been injured on his construction sites because he used defective materials. Families had been cheated out of their savings through inted contracts. Municipal officials had been bribed to overlook building code vitions.


    James remembered the day the federal agents came to arrest his father. The rage in Thomas Smith''s eyes as they read charges of fraud, bribery, and conspiracy. The way his voice turned cold as he promised revenge against the people who had exposed his crimes.


    "They think they''ve won," Thomas had said as they led him away in handcuffs. "But I''ll make them pay for destroying my business. Victoria Kane and Richard Pierce will regret the day they crossed the Smith family."


    But Thomas Smith never got his revenge. He died in federal prison three years into his sentence, killed by inmates who discovered he had been skimming money from a children''s hospital construction fund.


    James had been twenty-two when his father was arrested, a recent college graduate who had known about the family business''s illegal activities but had chosen to look the other way. When the conviction became public, when the newspapers detailed Thomas Smith''s extensive criminal history, James had changed his surname to Whitfield and disappeared from his old life.


    He had spent three years building a new identity, creating a respectable background that had no connection to Thomas Smith Construction. By the time James emerged as James Whitfield, businessman and consultant, no one remembered that he was the son of a convicted criminal.


    But James had never forgotten what Victoria Kane and Richard Pierce had done to his father''s empire.


    "I should have helped you get revenge," James said to the photograph. "I should have made them pay for exposing your business instead of running away and changing my name."


    The investigation that followed had consumed James''s life, but not to discover the truth about his father''s innocence. James knew Thomas Smith had been guilty of every charge brought against him. Instead, James had spent years learning how to destroy Victoria Kane and Richard Pierce the way they had destroyed his father''s criminal empire.


    James had discovered that Victoria Kane and Richard Pierce were honestpetitors who had simply reported criminal activity to the proper authorities. His father''s downfall hadn''t been the result of any conspiracy - it had been the natural consequence of years of fraud and corruption finally being exposed.


    But James didn''t care about justice or morality. He cared about revenge for the family business that had been taken away, for the wealth that had been confiscated, for the empire his father had built through crime and violence.


    Victoria Kane had cost the Smith family millions of dors by exposing their illegal construction practices. Richard Pierce had provided testimony that helped convict Thomas Smith and shut down the family''s criminal enterprise.


    But by the time James understood the truth, Victoria Kane had moved on to bigger enterprises. She had founded Kane Industries and left the construction business behind. Richard Pierce had started Meridian Technologies and seemed to have forgotten their partnership in destroying innocent people. James had spent years nning his revenge, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. When the factory explosion happened at Meridian Technologies, when Richard Pierce faced his own downfall, James had seen divine justice in action.


    But that justice hadn''t beenplete. Victoria Kane had survived the scandal, even thrived after Richard''s death. She had built an empire while James''s father rotted in an unmarked grave, forgotten by everyone except the son who had failed him.


    So James had decided to finish


    T.n


    what the factory explosion had started. He had manipted Richard Pierce, fed him information that would turn him against Victoria, encouraged his paranoia and desperation until Richard was ready to destroy himself if necessary to hurt the woman who had destroyed them both.


    But Richard had grown weak at the end. When James pushed him to take more extreme action against Victoria Kane, Richard had balked. He had started talking about going to the authorities, about admitting his own mistakes, about finding legal ways to expose Victoria''s crimes.


    James couldn''t allow that. Richard Pierce knew too much about James''s involvement, too much about the evidence that had been fabricated and the witnesses who had been bought. If Richard confessed to the authorities, James would be exposed as the puppet master behind years of fraud and maniption. So James had arranged for Richard to die. Not suicide, as the world believed, but murder made to look like a man overwhelmed by guilt taking his own life. A tragic end to a tragic story, with Victoria Kane left to carry the me for driving an innocent man to despair.


    Except Victoria Kane had survived that too. She had rebuilt her reputation, recovered from the scandal, and continued building her empire as if Richard Pierce had never existed.


    That was when James had started nning his final campaign. Fifteen years of patient preparation, waiting for the perfect weapon toplete his father''s revenge. When Alexander Pierce appeared, consumed by grief for his uncle''s death, James had seen the tool he needed.


    A grieving nephew who could be manipted into destroying Victoria Kane from within. A man with ess to her inner circle, someone she would never suspect until it was toote.


    James had crafted Alexander''s


    revenge carefully, feeding him just


    enough truth mixed with lies to keep


    him motivated. The factory


    explosion had really happened Richard Pierce had really died. Victoria Kane had really defended herpany against acéusations. But James had twisted those facts into a narrative that painted Victoria as a cold-blooded killer who destroyed innocent people for profit.


    And it had almost worked. Alexander had infiltrated Camille''s life, gained ess


    to Kane Industries, and systematically attacked Victoria''spany and reputation. James had watched with satisfaction as his fifteen-year n finally came to fruition.


    Until now. Until Alexander''s weakness and sentimentality had ruined everything.


    James turned back to the surveince screens, watching Alexander talking with the very people James had spent decades trying to destroy. The sight filled him with a rage that went beyond anger into something approaching madness. "You want to betray your uncle''s memory for a woman who exposed my father''s business?" James said to Alexander''s image on the screen. "You want to protect the people who destroyed everything my family built through years of hard work?" James walked to his desk and opened the bottom drawer, revealing a collection of items he had hoped never to use. False identification documents. Untraceable weapons. Detailed floor ns of Kane Industries, Victoria''s estate, and the hospital where she had been treated.


    Tools for ending this war permanently.


    If Alexander Pierce wanted to abandon their cause for sentiment, if he wanted to protect Victoria Kane instead of helping James reim


    what his family had lost, thes


    would handle the situation personally. He had waited fifteen years to get revenge for his father''s destroyed empire. He wouldn''t let a


    weak-willed romantic destroy


    everything he had built.


    James picked up his phone and began making calls. Not to Alexander this time,


    but to other contacts. People who understood that sometimes revenge required methods thew couldn''t provide.


    "It''s time," he said into the phone when the first contact answered. "The Kane situation requires direct intervention. All targets, all locations,plete elimination."


    As James gave his final instructions, he looked one more time at his father''s photograph. Thomas Smith stared back from the frame, forever frozen in a moment of pride and power, before Victoria Kane and Richard Pierce had exposed his crimes and destroyed his criminal empire.


    "Soon, Dad," James whispered. "Soon they''ll all pay for what they did to our family business. And this time, no one will survive to rebuild from the ashes."


    The war that had been fought in shadows for Twenty years was about to end in


    blood and fire. And James Whitfield intended to be the only one left standing when the smoke cleared.