350 # Beyond the Twelve-Million-Dollar Buyout and the Shattered Dynasty: A Rejected Ex-Wife’s Four-Child Vengeance, a Fale Heir’s Public Humiliation, and the Ultimate Seizure of an Empire / Chapter 86 / 100

Chapter 86 - Fractured Loyalties

Before we could finalize the flight plans for Scotland, a sharp scuffle broke out in the outer airlock.

Two of Alexander’s security men were thrown violently backward into the corridor, their bodies crashing against the steel walls. Standing in the doorway, soaked in rainwater and reeking of blood, was Tristan Vance.

He had somehow slipped his zip-ties—or someone had cut them. His left hand clutched a heavy combat knife he had stripped from a fallen guard, his face swollen into a hideous purple mask.

Alexander raised his weapon instantly, but I stepped in front of the barrel.

"How did you get here, Tristan?" I asked coldly. "Did you crawl two miles through the sewers?"

"I don't care about the money anymore, Katherine!" Tristan rasped, dropping the knife onto the floor with a dull clatter. He collapsed onto his knees, his hands trembling as he held them up in surrender. "You think he's just going to take their blood and let them live?! You don't know the full protocol!"

"Explain," I demanded, stepping forward until the tip of my boot touched his bloodied hands.

"The Sovereign Directorate doesn't allow shared bloodline access," Tristan choked out, tears cutting clean paths through the grime on his cheeks. "The Zurich vault only opens for *one* living sovereign heir! Arthur isn't bringing them there to crown them, Katherine! He's bringing them there to select one vessel... and eliminate the other three to prevent any future challenge to his absolute control!"

Alexander froze. "A consolidation purge. Just like the ancient Roman emperors."

"He did it to his own brothers forty years ago!" Tristan screamed, slamming his fist onto the floor. "He murdered his two younger brothers in an orchestrated yacht fire off Monaco! That's how he took full control of the Vance Trust! Eleanor knew! That's why she hated him! That's why she slept with another man—because she was terrified of what Arthur was!"

I looked at Tristan. For the first time in my life, I saw truth in his eyes. The sickening, cowardly truth of a broken man who finally understood that he had spent his entire existence worshipping the devil who held the executioner's axe above his neck.

"Why tell me this, Tristan?" I asked softly. "You hate me. You spent seven years degrading me. You tried to buy me out for twelve million dollars to erase my existence."

Tristan looked up at me, his eyes hollow, broken beyond repair.

"Because he left me," Tristan whispered, his voice trembling with a child's pathetic grief. "He hit me with that cane and left me to die in the gutter. If I'm going to be a bastard... I want to see you burn his kingdom to the ground."

Tristan reached into his torn inner pocket and pulled out a small, bloodstained silver cylinder—a hardware encryption key with the Vance crest engraved on the side.

"This is the secondary access frequency for Citadel Alpha’s underwater maintenance bays," Tristan said, offering it to me with both hands. "Eleanor stole it from his safe twenty years ago. She gave it to me before the helicopter lifted off. Take it. Kill him, Katherine. Kill the man who made us all monsters."

I took the cylinder from his hands.

"Alexander," I said without looking back. "Lock him in the secure holding cell. If he breathes wrong, put a bullet in his knee."

"Understood," Alexander replied, signaling his men to drag Tristan away.