Chapter 41 - The Dead Man's Covenant
"You touch one hair on my son's head," Emily’s voice was so low and vicious it sounded like the growl of a wounded wolf, "and I will tear your throat out with my bare hands."
Victoria didn't flinch. She didn't even look intimidated. She simply held up the open locket.
Inside, beneath the scratched glass, was a miniature photograph of two young men in the 1980s, smiling arm-in-arm on a boat: my father, and Marcus Vance.
Beneath the photograph was an inscription hand-carved in Latin.
*Sanguis pro Sanguine. Filius pro Imperio.*
*Blood for Blood. A Son for an Empire.*
"Your father didn't just kill my father, Brian," Victoria whispered, her eyes glowing in the faint firelight. "They made a blood pact when Harrington Industries was founded. If one partner failed to deliver his share of the debt, his bloodline was forfeit to the other. Your father used that pact to take my father's shares after he orchestrated his death. But the pact was legally registered under maritime law in the British Virgin Islands. It was never dissolved."
"That's medieval nonsense!" I snarled. "We are in the United States! Contract law doesn't recognize blood pacts or human collateral!"
"Contract law doesn't," Victoria agreed softly. "International trust arbitration, however, does. Especially when that trust controls forty percent of the sovereign debt bonds that your hedge fund used to purchase Harrington Tower yesterday morning."
She tilted her head, listening.
From outside, through the ocean fog, came the deep, thrumming vibration of heavy twin-rotor helicopter blades cutting through the winter air, descending low over the coastal bluffs behind the cottage.
At the exact same instant, from the end of the dark hallway, came the sound of a window sliding open in the nursery.
The cold air swept down the corridor.
Then, a tiny, terrified whimper from Leo’s crib.
Emily didn't wait. She broke from my side, sprinting toward the nursery door with a mother's savage speed.
"LEO!" she screamed.
I turned my gun toward Victoria's head, my finger beginning to squeeze the trigger—
Victoria didn't move. She simply looked at me, her smile widening into a terrifying, triumphant abyss.
May you like
"Shoot me, Brian," she whispered, her voice barely louder than the approaching roar of the helicopter. "And the timer on the nursery window's pressurized thermite seal goes to zero."
Down the hall, Emily's bloodcurdling scream shattered the darkness.
