Chapter 47 - The Broken Scion
Julian Vance looked like a phantom of the man I had divorced.
His immaculate hair was gone, sheared down to an uneven buzz. His cheeks were hollowed, sunken by hunger and substance abuse, and a deep, jagged scar ran along his left temple—a souvenir from his time in the federal remand center before he had vanished on bail. He was sitting in a dimly lit, damp room that looked like a cheap Parisian boarding house, wearing a threadbare woolen jumper.
"Katherine," Julian began, his voice hoarse, trembling with a mixture of terror and bitter humiliation. "If you're watching this, you made it out of the Conclave alive. I knew... I knew Eleanor wouldn't be able to kill you."
Alexander drew closer to the screen, his eyes narrowed with suspicion. "It could be a trap. A digital ping to locate this villa."
"No," I said, studying Julian's eyes. I had known this man for ten years. I had loved him once, back when I was naive enough to believe his charm was real. Now, I saw only the raw, pathetic dread of a man who realized he had been nothing more than a disposable puppet his entire life.
"I didn't know about Christian," Julian continued on the recording, his hands shaking violently as he brought a half-smoked cigarette to his chapped lips. "I swear to God, Katherine, I didn't know she had another son. She told me I was the future. She told me you were a parasite trying to steal my birthright. But when I was in that cell... when you crushed my holdings and took the empire... she never sent a lawyer. She never answered my calls. She had already activated Christian."
He let out a dry, rattling cough that sounded like broken glass.
"Christian isn't human, Katherine. He was raised in black-budget compounds. He killed his first tutor when he was fourteen just to prove he felt no empathy. Eleanor gave him the master cipher to the Obsidian Protocol."
My fingers tightened around the edge of the desk. "The Obsidian Protocol..."
"Yes," Julian said, his voice dropping to an urgent, terrified whisper. "It’s the doomsday switch for the Vance empire. If Eleanor cannot own the sovereign assets, the protocol triggers a synchronized short-sale against the Bank of England and the New York Exchange, creating an artificial run on the Vance banks. It will trigger a twenty-billion-dollar margin call on your companies within twelve hours. You will be wiped out before the markets open tomorrow."
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Julian leaned forward, his bloodshot eyes staring directly into the lens.
"I have the cipher, Katherine. I stole it from Eleanor’s private vault in Mayfair before she locked me out. Meet me at St. Pancras Station in London at midnight. Give me five million dollars, an unlisted passport, and a guarantee that you won't let Christian kill me. I’ll give you the cipher that destroys them both."
