Damien slowly lowered himself back into the chair and pulled the folder toward him.
He opened it and began scanning through the documents inside.
The first was a police report.
Damien’s expression changed.
He recognized many of the details because he had spent countless hours going through the records he had managed to obtain seven years ago.
Cassandra had been intoxicated.
That part, at least, had been true.
The report Damien had obtained back then stated that Cassandra, impaired by alcohol, had caused the collision. It also stated that despite her own injuries and disorientation, she had immediately called for emergency assistance after checking on the occupants of the other
vehicle.
By the time the couple were transported to the hospital, both had been declared dead on
arrival.
It had painted the picture of a horrific but straightforward drunk–driving accident.
Cassandra had made a reckless, devastating mistake, but afterward, she had supposedly done what she could.
Damien knew now that almost everything beyond the collision itself had been a fucking lie.
He had just watched the truth with his own eyes.
He turned the page and found the original autopsy reports.
His attention immediately settled on Julian’s.
Damien read quickly at first, but several details soon forced him to slow down and go through each line more carefully.
Julian had suffered multiple injuries in the collision, including fractured ribs and severe abdominal trauma caused by a section of the crushed interior penetrating his lower abdomen. The injury had resulted in extensive internal bleeding.
But it had not killed him on impact.
Chapter 346 Three Versions of the Truth
Damien went still.
His eyes moved over that finding again.
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Julian’s injuries indicated that he had survived the initial impact, his condition progressively deteriorating as the internal hemorrhage continued. Eventually, the uncontrolled blood loss had resulted in severe hemorrhagic shock and cardiac arrest.
The footage immediately replayed in Damien’s mind.
The movement inside the wreckage. The arm lifting. The hand reaching desperately toward
Cassandra.
Julian hadn’t been reaching out in some final reflex.
He had been conscious.
He had been asking for help.
And Cassandra had stepped away from him.
Damien’s grip tightened around the folder as he continued reading, his eyes moving carefully over every line as though he needed to make absolutely certain he hadn’t misunderstood any
of it.
Then he turned to Malia’s report.
Her injuries were different.
She had suffered significant head trauma during the collision, resulting in intracranial bleeding that likely accounted for her lack of responsiveness immediately afterward.
She had also sustained abdominal injuries that caused substantial internal bleeding.
But Malia hadn’t died on impact either.
She had been unconscious, but she had still been alive.
Damien’s fingers tightened around the pages as he continued reading.
Then he reached the estimated times of death.
His eyes stopped.
He checked the time of the collision.
Then the estimated times of death.
Chapter 346 Three Versions of the Truth
Then the hospital arrival time.
His jaw slowly clenched.
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There was more than an hour between the collision and their eventual arrival at the hospital.
Yet the original medical findings placed both estimated times of death well after the collision, approximately thirty minutes before they were finally brought to the hospital.
They had survived the crash, and they had remained alive long enough for help to have reached them.
The footage had already shown him that much, but seeing it documented in black and white made the deception even more horrifying.
The report he had been given seven years ago hadn’t technically lied about one thing.
Julian and Malia had been dead on arrival at the hospital.
What Viktor had buried was everything that happened before they became DOA.
Damien turned another page and found an independent medical assessment based on the original autopsy findings.
He read it carefully.
Julian’s abdominal injuries had required immediate control of the hemorrhage, blood transfusions, and emergency surgery. Malia had required urgent stabilization of her internal bleeding along with neurological intervention for the hemorrhage caused by her head trauma.
Neither survival could ever have been guaranteed.
But the conclusion was clear.
Their injuries had been potentially survivable.
Had emergency services been contacted immediately and both victims received appropriate trauma care during the critical period following the collision, each would have had a substantial chance of survival.
Damien lowered the report.
His stomach twisted.
For seven years, he had believed that despite causing the accident, Cassandra had at least done the right thing afterward and immediately called for help.
Chapter 346 Three Versions of the Truth
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For seven years, he had believed the couple’s injuries had simply been too severe for anyone to save them.
And Viktor had known exactly what he was allowing Damien to believe.
Damien continued through the folder until he reached the final page.
It was a photograph of Maya and Jaime.
Maya was much younger then, standing beside a little boy. Both were dressed in black, watching as their parents were laid to rest.
Damien stared at the photograph.
Jaime looked so small, and Maya wasn’t much more than a child herself. Yet she stood close beside her little brother as though she already understood that from that day forward,
she was the only person he had left.
Something tightened painfully inside Damien’s chest.
Maya had told him about losing her parents. He knew the version of their deaths she had grown up accepting, believing it had simply been a terrible accident, one of those cruel tragedies no one could have predicted or prevented.
She had spent seven years believing there was no one to blame.
Ken’s voice finally broke through his thoughts.
“At that point, all Viktor cared about was cleaning up Cassandra’s mess and making sure nothing could be traced back to his daughter.”
Damien slowly lifted his head.
Without another word, Ken opened one of the desk drawers and pulled out two more folders. He placed them side by side in front of Damien.
“There are three versions of what happened that night,” he said.
Ken gestured toward the folder already open in Damien’s hands.
“The truth is what you just read.”
Then he tapped the first folder on the desk.
“This is the version Viktor allowed you to see.”
His hand moved to the second.
Chapter 346 Three Versions of the Truth
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“And this is the version he wanted the grieving family and the rest of the world to believe.”
Damien’s eyes settled on it.
“This,” Ken continued, “is the version Maya and Jaime know.”
Damien placed the folder in his hands on the desk and reached for the other one.
He opened it.
The deeper he read, the colder his expression became.
It was completely different.
According to this version, Julian and Malia had died in an unfortunate traffic accident after a
truck lost control and collided with their vehicle.
There was no mention of Cassandra. No intoxicated driver. No Volkov. No indication of
criminal wrongdoing or deliberate interference of any kind.
The investigation had supposedly found no evidence of foul play or circumstances warranting further investigation.
Then Damien reached the accompanying autopsy report.
His eyes darkened further.
It bore little resemblance to the one he had just read.
According to the report Maya had been given, both of their parents had sustained catastrophic injuries during the collision and died at the scene. Their deaths were attributed directly to the force of impact and the multiple traumatic injuries they had sustained.
There was nothing about Julian remaining conscious.
Nothing about his prolonged internal bleeding.
Nothing about Malia surviving the initial impact.
Nothing about the estimated times of death showing that both had remained alive afterward.
It was a carefully orchestrated lie, built around just enough believable details to make it almost impossible to question.
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Thenjiwe Mofokeng