Ceter 348 Pulling the Strings
Chapter 348: Pulling the Strings
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Ken remained seated as Damien paced across the study, his anger still visibly simmering beneath
the surface.
He allowed him a few seconds before speaking.
“Money has a way of revealing what people truly value,” he said quietly. “And anyone willing to
choose it over their own blood was never worth much to begin with.”
Ken regarded him with open distaste.
“The truth is, Viktor didn’t have to work very hard to convince them.”
Damien stopped pacing and turned toward him, his breathing heavy and his fists clenched tightly
át his sides.
“How? D
Viktor already have some kind of connection to them before the accident?”
Ken shook his head.
“No. It’s because they barely had a relationship with Julian to begin with. His family never
approved of the life he chose for himself because they believed he had wasted his intelligence and
his future by settling down with someone they considered unworthy of him.”
“Unworthy?!” Damien spat, disbelief mixing with the anger already burning through him. “It was the
other way around! Malia walked away from her own family and everything that came with being a
Lockwood because she chose Julian!”
“Yes, but they didn’t know that,” Ken replied. “As far as they were concerned, Malia was nothing
more than an ordinary scholarship student with no family name, wealth, or social standing behind
her.”
Ken’s voice took on a note of contempt.
“They never cared much for Julian’s marriage, and they had even less involvement in the lives of
his children.”
Damien stared at him, his fury taking on an entirely different edge.
“They’re fucking idiots. They already had gold standing right in front of them, and they were too
fucking blind to see it. Instead, they looked down on her and sold their own blood for scraps!” His
lip curled in disgust.
“Hell, I’d give them ten million if they went and killed themselves.”
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“Couldn’t agree more,” Ken replied coldly.
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“But that’s exactly what made it so easy for Viktor. He wasn’t asking devoted relatives to abandon people they loved. He was offering opportunistic vultures a chance to profit from a family they had already decided they wanted nothing to do with.”
His voice hardened.
“And apparently, two million dollars was all it took.”
Ken leaned back in his chair.
“They took the money, severed whatever little connection they had left, and never looked back. Julian was dead, and as far as they were concerned, Maya and Jaime might as well have never existed.”
Damien turned away, disgust rolling through him.
“They looked down on Malia and her children as though they weren’t good enough for their family, when those fucking parasites weren’t even worthy of standing beside Malia herself, much less
Maya and Jaime!”
The irony was almost insulting. They had judged Malia for having no family name, no wealth, and
no social standing, never realizing that she had deliberately walked away from a bloodline more
powerful and prestigious than anything they could have imagined.
But as satisfying as their ignorance might have been, something still didn’t make sense.
Damien’s anger gave way to suspicion, and he abruptly turned back to face Ken.
“But why? Why would Viktor do that in the first place? Why would he care whether Julian’s family stayed in Maya and Jaime’s lives?”
Ken regarded him steadily, the contempt in his expression giving way to something far more
serious.
“Because he needed them powerless.”
He loosely interlocked his fingers in front of him.
“Think about it. Maya lost both of her parents overnight. She had just turned eighteen, but
suddenly, she was the only person Jaime had left. No parents. No relatives. No one to take even
some of that responsibility off her shoulders.”
A trace of anger entered Ken’s otherwise composed expression, his voice taking on a colder edge.
“She didn’t have the luxury of wondering whether something about the accident didn’t add up. She
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Chapter 348 Piling the Strings
had a little brother depending on her. She had to figure out how they were going to survive.”
His eyes remained fixed on Damien.
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“And Viktor made damn sure she stayed in that position. The more isolated they were, the easier they were to control. Maya’s entire world became about keeping herself and Jaime afloat.”
Ken shifted slightly in his chair, one hand settling against the armrest.
“Why would she start digging into an accident she had already been told was unavoidable when she was too busy trying to make sure she and her little brother had something to eat the next day?
Ken fell silent briefly, giving Damien time to absorb the cruel reality and connect the pieces as the larger picture of Viktor’s manipulation slowly began to take shape.
It made sickening sense.
The more Damien understood, the more his anger grew. What he had once believed to be a series of unfortunate circumstances in Maya’s life was beginning to look like the work of a puppet master quietly pulling strings from the shadows.
Every hardship Maya had endured became even more infuriating in hindsight.
Viktor hadn’t simply erased Cassandra from the accident. He had manipulated Maya’s
circumstances afterward to keep her too overwhelmed with survival to ever question the story she had been given.
Then an unsettling thought struck Damien.
“What about Jaime’s condition?” His eyes shot to Ken. “Did he have something to do with that too?
“1
“No,” Ken answered without hesitation. “Jaime’s illness had nothing to do with Viktor. That was an
unfortunate circumstance no one could have anticipated.”
A fraction of the tension left Damien, but Ken wasn’t finished.
“Unfortunately, it still worked in Viktor’s favor. Maya was already struggling to keep them afloat.
Once Jaime became sick, survival wasn’t her only concern anymore. Keeping her brother alive
became her entire world.”
Ken’s voice grew colder.
“Doctors. Treatments. Medications. Hospital bills. Whatever little time, money, or energy she
might have had left went toward Jaime.”
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Chapter 348 Pulting the Stings
Damien remained silent as the implications sank in.
“Viktor didn’t cause Jaime’s illness,” Ken continued. “But once he realized what was happening, I imagine he breathed a little easier. It became another distraction he never had to create himself”
That realization left a bitter taste in Damien’s mouth.
For years, Maya had fought desperately to keep her brother ällve, never knowing that the same struggle consuming every part of her life had also benefited the man who buried the truth about their parents.
Damien’s attention returned to the documents spread across the desk, eventually settling on the recurring transactions.
“What about these? The ten thousand every month?”
Something subtle shifted in Ken’s expression.
“That,” he said, “is the most interesting part.”
Damien looked up from the documents.
“What do you mean?”
“It started with Cassandra’s guilt.”
Damien’s attention sharpened at the mention of her name.
“She wanted to do something for the family of the people who died in the accident. But given her
mental state at the time, Viktor assured her he would take care of everything on her behalf.”
Ken reached for the page containing the recurring payments and tapped it lightly with his finger.
“And he did,” he said, a hint of contempt entering his voice. “Just not in the way Cassandra
believed.”
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