Chapter176: A Deadly Surprise

CASSANDRA   Cassandra was watching the night through her bedroom window, arms crossed, her expression closed off. The wind lightly swayed the heavy curtains, but she didn’t even blink. She had been there for hours, inert, like a statue carved in ice.   On the outside, she was the controlled matriarch of the Halley family.   Inside… she was a woman on the verge of collapse.   Richard. Her husband’s absence was slowly and silently consuming her. And now, with the new challenge imposed by Santiago, the pieces on the board were moving quickly — and she knew, with cold clarity, who was the pawn Santiago wanted to turn into a queen: Mayara Angelina.   “Two hundred and fifty billion dollars,” she thought, narrowing her eyes.   An absurd amount. A sum that could destroy empires or make them rise anew. And Santiago, in his maquiavelic madness, had crafted this entire play around that girl. The cursed granddaughter, as she internally called her, though she would never admit the bitterness she fe