Chapter 86 - The Iron Grandfather
The blast doors of Ward Four hung from their hinges, twisted into smoking iron ribbons. Inside, the air was opaque with cordite and pulverized concrete.
I burst through the smoke, rifle raised, every muscle coiled to kill.
Three mercenary operators lay incapacitated against the shattered filing banks, their armor riddled with close-range buckshot. But in the center of the shattered room stood Arthur Sterling, entirely untouched. Two personal bodyguards flanking him held their weapons trained directly on Emily, who was cornered against the far reinforced pillar.
Her face was smeared with carbon, her knuckles bruised and bleeding, but she held the empty shotgun like a war club, positioning her body completely between the gunmen and the infant carrier nestled securely inside a steel crate behind her.
"Hold your fire!" Arthur commanded softly without turning his head.
His bodyguards froze.
Arthur slowly turned around, using his carved cane to step over a fallen shell casing. He looked at me, taking in the soaked clothes, the blood dripping from a gash on my forehead, and the cold, unyielding iron in my eyes.
"Punctual," Arthur said, nodding in genuine appreciation. "Just under eighty minutes from Maine. Marcus could never have made that transit. He would have called three lawyers and a public relations firm before finding the courage to board a helicopter."
"Step away from my wife," I said, my voice dropping into a register that made the bodyguards shift their weight uncomfortably.
"She fought brilliantly," Arthur remarked, glancing back at Emily with an appraising smirk. "I confess, when my intelligence reports suggested you had married a middle-class schoolteacher, I expected a fragile creature who would fold at the first sound of a breaching charge. But she has spine. She fits the bloodline far better than Marcus’s simpering socialite wife."
"We don't give a damn about your bloodline," Emily snarled from the corner, her breathing ragged but her eyes ablaze. "Get out of here before my husband buries you in this vault."
Arthur laughed—a dry, brittle sound that echoed off the damp walls. "Bury me? My dear girl, I built the foundation this entire country trades upon. Look at him! Look at Brian! Do you truly believe that will, that intelligence, that capacity for calculated destruction came from a Harrington?"
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He stepped closer, tapping his cane against the concrete.
"You are my son, Brian. The only true heir to the Sterling maritime throne. Marcus stole you. But I am giving you the world."
