CHAPTER 404. A CAGE FOR THE QUEEN. One More GameJhon felt like his heart was about to burst out of his chest. That simple gesture, that simple move meant everything to him. He rushed to the table, grabbed his own tablet and chess set, hurriedly organized it, and placed that move on the board. He didn’t even have to think much before responding.“e6. Your move,” he wrote, his hands almost trembling as he waited for a response. He watched the screen, and on the other side of the cameras, Chiara was eating and thinking.“Cf3,” she decided almost ten minutes later, and for a long while, they exchanged moves.Jhon frowned, unable to see what she was trying to do.“f5. Are you playing with me?” he asked, unable to hold back.“I thought that was the point of the board,” Chiara typed. “Cc3.”“You know that’s not what I meant. You’re playing aimlessly, and that’s not like you. Cf6.”Chiara read that message for a moment, got up, walked around the room, took a deep breath, drank a glass of wat
CHAPTER 405. A CAGE FOR THE QUEEN. The End of the GameShe wanted only one thing, and Jhon knew it: to save her family. Before, he had thought he shouldn’t get involved, that she was doing it for her name, and that money was more important than her freedom. But seeing Chiara in that cage was enough to make him realize that no, money wasn’t just money, and Asterion Bank wasn’t just a bank—it was her family’s entire legacy. He had destroyed generations of work with a single USB. He didn’t sleep that night, not when he knew he had one last chance with her, the final one, and that he needed to find a way to earn another at any cost. He waited, waited impatiently for the next day, after the morning nausea and the rejection of any food, for Chiara to sit down in front of that chessboard. But first, she received a visitor. Chiara hugged her sister and accepted the gifts the whole family had sent with her. “I’m sorry I couldn’t come yesterday. It was complete madness. I wasn’t even in t
CHAPTER 406. A CAGE FOR THE QUEEN. NegotiationsJohn paced around the courtyard of the large mansion, his footsteps echoing through the stone galleries, utterly exhausted. The last two days had been spent being interviewed, beaten, and threatened by people loyal to the man he wanted to meet. But he was determined to be brought before Franco Garibaldi, the Count of the Italian 'Ndrangheta.Now, he was alone—just him, his thoughts, and his guilt. He thought about Chiara and the promises he'd made to her but failed to keep. Now, he would do anything to help her and make amends for what he'd done.He hadn’t been waiting long when a tall, broad figure entered from one corner of the courtyard. John recognized him instantly: it was Archer, the nameless man, Franco Garibaldi’s right hand and personal Executioner. Archer nodded at John and glanced at the dried blood on the corner of John’s mouth.“Tough welcome?” Archer asked in his gravelly voice, and John grimaced.“No one can ask to see the
CHAPTER 407. A CAGE FOR THE QUEEN. Trust MeJohn was on a roll. He could feel it in each of his two broken bones. It wasn’t just because he had struck a deal with Mamma and the Conte, but because he knew they wouldn’t go back on their word. At least on their end, the clients would return to Asterion Bank.Now, he faced another battle, one much tougher because it was against people who were used to being untouchable.“Malcolm Sabater, none other than the Chief of Staff of the White House.”The president’s right-hand man and the one who knew all forty-six dignitaries in the government who kept their corrupt money at Asterion.“Is everything ready?” John asked Billy as soon as he landed in Switzerland, and Billy handed him the Malcolm Sabater file.“Now the hardest part remains, and that depends on your wife’s goodwill,” Billy warned, not seeming too confident about that particular fact.However, John seemed more than determined. “Give the package to Speedy. He knows what to do.”From t
CHAPTER 408. A CAGE FOR THE QUEEN. ChocochipsJhon was good at many things, and threatening with precision and conviction was one of them. Perhaps that’s why the next day Noémi was surprised when she was told that Malcom Sabater had returned and wanted to see her."Excuse me, what did you say?" she asked, needing to confirm because she thought her ears had deceived her. "Did you say 'reopen his account'?"The White House Chief of Staff nodded without offering many more explanations, and within a couple of hours, everything was set up again.The following week was just as strange, so much so that when Noémi went to visit Chiara six days later, she didn’t even know where to start."Is it bad news?" Chiara asked when she saw her sister’s expression."No… I don’t think so… I don’t know!" exclaimed Noémi, sitting beside her on the sofa. "Ara, the Mamma was at the bank."Chiara felt her voice leave her, and her heart raced so fast she could hear it thudding in her ears."Did she do anything
CHAPTER 409. A CAGE FOR THE QUEEN. Shall we play tonight?Chiara hung up and placed the phone beside her as she kept her eyes fixed on the floor. Then she curled up on the bed and closed her eyes, trying to process everything that was happening, especially what she had just learned.Three hours later, Jhon started to worry, but eventually, he saw her get up to have something for dinner. She walked her usual rounds around the room and then stopped in front of the box where she had stored the chess set and the remnants of the tablet they used to communicate."We shouldn’t have broken this, right, baby?" she said, caressing her belly. "Sometimes we feel like talking to someone, even if that someone is your father and he drives us crazy."Jhon felt his heart swell when he heard those words, and within seconds, he was already asking Billy to prepare another tablet for him. He was sure that for Speedy, smuggling it into the prison wouldn’t be any harder than the first time, and Jhon smiled
CHAPTER 410. A CAGE FOR THE QUEEN. DarknessHe could have stammered, trembled, mumbled, run... any reaction would have been valid at that moment, but Jhon just stood there, frozen, looking into her eyes as his own filled with tears that he couldn’t hold back.The pajamas Chiara wore weren’t loose, so he could see the slight curve of her belly, just starting to show."Are you spying on me?" she hissed, though the question was purely rhetorical. Of course, he was spying on her! "I asked you a question, Jhon! Or do you want me to scream in the middle of the night and see if you can escape all the guards that will come running?"He shook his head, trying to approach, but Chiara’s first instinct was to step back."How...? How did you figure it out?" he asked."‘Special clients,’" she replied in an icy tone. "My sister said those words, and less than ten minutes later, you repeated the exact same ones, referring to the same people."Jhon closed his eyes, grimacing. It seemed like he was lo
CHAPTER 411. A CAGE FOR THE QUEEN. An Important DecisionShe wanted to hate him; it was much easier that way because she needed someone to blame for everything that was happening. But the truth was, hating Jhon Hopkins wasn’t that simple.She couldn’t sleep the rest of that night, but the next morning, as soon as the sun came up, she stood in front of that bookshelf and began pulling out one book after another, reading through them. Each one had passages like the first she had read—words full of regret, painful because Chiara knew they were true.If Jhon was there watching over her, it meant he could no longer be at the agency working. She understood that the only reason a man like him would have left the job he’d built his life around was for her and their child. Nothing else mattered to him anymore, and he was proving it.She closed her eyes for a moment and remembered the bruises on his face and his split lip. He had to have been desperate to walk into the lion’s den of the ‘Ndrang