Chapter 33 - Blood on the Marble
"Julian, you fool," Henrik's cultured voice filtered through the surveillance console's crackling audio. "Look at what your incompetence has forced us to do. You lost the Chicago board. You lost the buyout capital. You couldn't even control a single woman and her children."
Julian flinched, clutching a battered leather briefcase against his ribs. "You promised no slaughter, Henrik! You said this was an asset extraction! You said the children were just leverage to force her to sign the Sovereign waiver!"
"Leverage requires possession," Henrik said dismissively, brushing a fleck of plaster off his lapel. "And in the game of sovereign trusts, a dead heir is far less complicated than an active claimant."
Down in the vault, my blood turned to glacial ice. They weren't here to negotiate. They had come to wipe out my bloodline to prevent the transfer of the 350-billion-dollar sovereign estate.
On the screen, Alexander emerged from behind the shattered library mantle. His sidearm was empty, slide locked back. In his right hand, he held a blackened combat blade salvaged from one of the downed operators. His left arm hung slightly limp, grazed by shrapnel, but his posture was absolute regality amidst the ruins.
"Henrik," Alexander's voice came through the mic, deep, resonant, and dripping with contempt. "You broke the Lausanne Accord. The Council will execute you for setting foot on sovereign American soil with wet-work contractors."
"The Council?" Henrik laughed softly, pulling a pearl-handled pistol from his coat. "The Council is a board of aging aristocrats who only respect the bottom line. Once your four mongrel children are eradicated, Alexander, the trust defaults to Eleanor's bloodline—which I control through the Vance holding companies. You played the noble shadow for ten years. It ends tonight."
Henrik raised his weapon toward Alexander's chest.
"Mama, look!" Leo suddenly pointed at the auxiliary panel on our tactical console.
A flashing green icon was blinking beneath the master controls: *Compound Defensive Grid: Overpressure Fire Suppression.*
The estate was equipped with an industrial Halon gas fire-extinguishing system designed to suffocate museum-grade archives within seconds. It had independent pneumatic plumbing that the EMP couldn't sever.
"Children, stay here," I said, my voice dead calm.
I stepped up to the panel, flipped the safety glass with the butt of my empty gun, and gripped the manual purge valve. On the monitor, Henrik had his finger on the trigger, mere feet from Alexander.
May you like
"Die a commoner, Alexander," Henrik sneered.
"Never," I whispered, and slammed the purge lever all the way down.
