The assassination attempt had been the tipping point we needed, but not in the way Victor had intended. Instead of silencing me, it had given us the perfect weapon to destroy him from within his own organization. Three days after the attack, I was sitting in a private dining room at Claridge's Hotel, across from someone I never thought I'd see again—my cousin Marcus Blackwood.
Marcus was Victor's nephew, the son of his younger brother who had died in a car accident fifteen years ago. At thirty-five, he was technically the second-most senior member of the Blackwood family after Victor himself, and he controlled significant business interests throughout Eastern Europe. More importantly, he had always been one of the few family members who treated me with basic human decency.
