Chapter 5 - The Zurich Lie
5 - 15
The trench seemed to stretch downward into an infinite abyss of deception. My pulse roared in my ears like a freight train, drowning out the distant crash of the Mediterranean waves against the seawall.
"Recognize it, Luca?" Marcus’s voice drifted across the dirt pit, dripping with a cold, mocking satisfaction. "Recognize the watch? The briefcase? The final resting place of your beloved first wife, Clara?"
I tore my eyes away from the shroud at the bottom of the trench and spun around to face Marcus. My hand was now fully gripped around the Beretta 9mm inside my coat, my thumb resting on the safety catch.
"Explain this," I said, my voice vibrating with a lethal, controlled fury. "Clara died in Zurich twelve years ago. Her death was certified by Dr. Viktor Baumann at the Alpine Clinic. I buried her in Zurich. I attended the funeral."
Marcus let out a sharp, barking laugh that echoed off the concrete mixer behind me.
"Funeral? What funeral, Luca? An empty mahogany box filled with lead weights and river sand?" Marcus shook his head slowly, stepping a little closer, though his two tactical guards kept their assault rifles raised and pointed dead-center at my chest. "You were young, arrogant, and blinded by grief—or rather, the convenient shock of a tragedy that happened precisely when you needed it to happen."
"What are you implying?" I demanded, taking a half-step forward.
"I’m not implying anything; I’m stating facts," Marcus said, tapping the screen of his satellite tablet. "Twelve years ago, you weren't the multibillion-euro real estate tycoon you are today. You were an ambitious, over-leveraged developer drowning in bad loans across the Costa del Sol. Your projects were failing, your investors were pulling out, and your marriage to Clara—a woman belonging to one of the wealthiest banking families in Zurich—was falling apart. Clara discovered your offshore shell companies. She discovered you were embezzling funds from her family's trust to keep your Spanish developments afloat. She threatened to divorce you, take custody of the unborn child, and hand every single document over to the Swiss financial police."
Every word Marcus spoke hit like a physical hammer blow. The memories of that stormy November in Zurich flashed through my mind—the arguments, the cold silences, the desperate midnight meetings with lawyers.
"She didn't die of a postpartum hemorrhage, did she?" I whispered, the horrifying realization dawning on me with crushing weight.
"Dr. Viktor Baumann was your payroll, Luca, not a Swiss saint," Marcus said smoothly. "Clara gave birth to Isabella safely. A healthy baby girl. But the moment the birth was registered, Baumann administered a paralytic agent disguised as a postnatal vitamin injection. Clara didn't bleed out on the operating table; she was suffocated while you sat in the waiting room weeping for the cameras."
The ground beneath my feet seemed to tilt sideways. The grief I had carried for twelve years—the guilt of surviving while my wife perished—wasn't just a sorrow; it was a manufactured prop in a murder plot orchestrated by my own hands, funded by my own accounts, and covered up by the very men I trusted.
"And you," I said, staring at Marcus with absolute revulsion. "You helped orchestrate the cover-up."
"I was your CFO, Luca! Of course I helped!" Marcus snapped, his professional veneer cracking for a second to reveal the ruthless opportunist underneath. "I arranged the logistics. I had Clara’s body flown down here to Marbella inside a sealed diplomatic crate marked for construction equipment. And I buried her right here on this coastal parcel before you even purchased the land—knowing full well that years later, you would buy this exact plot, build your luxury marina over her bones, and spend the rest of your life standing unknowingly on top of your own crime scene."
A wave of nausea washed over me. The sheer, diabolical cruelty of the plot was breathtaking. It wasn't just a murder; it was a cage designed to trap me for eternity—a psychological prison where I unknowingly built my monuments of success directly over the corpse of the woman I was framed for eliminating.
"And Beatriz?" I asked, my voice barely audible over the wind. "Where does she fit into this masterpiece?"
Marcus smiled—a cold, thin line of triumph.
"Beatriz is Clara’s younger sister," Marcus said quietly.
The final puzzle piece slammed into place with the force of an earthquake.
"She didn't marry you out of love, Luca," Marcus continued, relishing every syllable. "She married you for vengeance. For twelve years, she played the loving wife, watching you build your four-hundred-million-euro empire, waiting for the precise moment when the foundation was high enough, vulnerable enough, and public enough to collapse. And she used your own daughter—Clara’s daughter—as the instrument of your psychological destruction."
The two tactical guards standing beside Marcus shifted their weight, their weapons locking tighter onto my chest.
"End of the road, Luca," Marcus said, raising his hand to signal his men. "The municipal inspectors are scheduled to unearth the trench at 8:00 AM tomorrow morning, accompanied by the national police and every major media outlet in Spain. The DNA evidence on Clara’s remains, combined with the financial records in your safe and your forged Swiss death certificates, will paint a picture of a ruthless psychopath who murdered his wealthy wife, buried her at a construction site, and raised their daughter in a house built on blood."
"You think you've won," I said, keeping my voice eerily calm as my right hand slid slowly beneath my overcoat, wrapping around the textured grip of the Beretta 9mm.
"We haven't just won, Luca," Marcus scoffed, taking a step back. "We've checkmated you in three moves."
He didn't see the movement coming. Years of surviving hostile corporate takeovers, violent extortion attempts, and dangerous real estate acquisitions in volatile international markets had taught me one unchanging survival rule: Never telegraph your counterattack.
In one fluid, lightning-fast motion, I drew the Beretta from my holster, whipped it level, and fired twice.
Crack! Crack!
The muzzle flashes illuminated the darkness in blinding white strokes. I wasn't aiming at Marcus. I aimed directly at the towering halogen work light mounted on a steel pole five yards to his left.
The heavy-duty bulb exploded in a shower of white-hot sparks and shattering glass, plunging the entire excavation site into pitch-black darkness.
Shouts of shock erupted from the tactical guards as chaos instantly swallowed the trench.
"Shoot him! Find him!" Marcus screamed, his voice cracking with sudden panic as heavy combat boots scrambled across the gravel.
May you like
I didn't hesitate. I dropped flat to the muddy ground, rolling hard behind a massive stack of concrete drainage pipes just as a burst of automatic gunfire chewed the dirt where I had been standing a second earlier, sending hot lead screeching off the metal pipe above my head.
The war for my empire—and my daughter—had just begun. And I was no longer playing by their rules.
