Chapter 96 - The Phantasm of Münstergasse
"Let him in," I said.
Marcus stared at me as if I had lost my mind. "Katherine, if we open this threshold, our tactical chokepoint is compromised. We don't know how many shadows he has in the courtyard."
"He came to the front door because he has no tactical breach team ready yet," Clara intervened, her sharp eyes scanning the mechanical schematic on her desk. "If the syndicate had enough clearance to breach this building with force, they wouldn't knock. The historical preservation covenant on Münstergasse puts this entire row under federal automated surveillance. If a round is fired outside, the municipal police will be here in three minutes. He needs us to sign willingly. He needs Maya's uncoerced biometric pulse."
I nodded slowly. "Unbolt the top latch, Marcus. Keep your sights on his sternum."
Marcus grimaced, but he stepped forward, sliding back the three heavy iron deadbolts with heavy, echoing clunks. He swung the door inward just six inches, his body shielding Maya and the safe.
The man who stepped across the threshold was an apparition carved from spite and winter fog. He wore a charcoal cashmere coat, unbuttoned to reveal an impeccably tailored three-piece suit that hung slightly loose on his frame, evidence of an illness or an arduous decade underground. His silver hair was swept back from his high, aristocratic forehead, and his pale eyes—the exact same icy blue that had looked down at Maya when he demanded her chair—fixed instantly upon me.
In his right hand, he carried a polished ebony cane with an ivory pommel. His left hand was tucked casually into his trouser pocket. Behind him, the mist-draped cobblestones of Münstergasse were dead empty, slick with rain, illuminated only by the faint amber halo of the streetlamps.
"Ten years," Arthur Vance said, stepping past Marcus's drawn weapon without so much as glancing at the barrel. "And you haven't bought a single piece of jewelry that didn't come from an estate sale."
He stopped three paces into the room, leaning on his cane, his eyes drifting slowly from me to Clara, and finally resting upon Maya. A cruel, possessive smile played at the edges of his thin lips.
"Look at you," he murmured, his gaze sweeping over my daughter. "The little stray from the foot of the table. You grew up to look remarkably like your grandmother. Eleanor had that same obstinate set to her chin whenever she threatened to leave me."
"Don't speak her name," Clara hissed, her hand resting on the frame of the mechanical card terminal. "Eleanor died despising everything you built."
"Eleanor died wealthy, Clara," Arthur said coldly, turning his head slightly. "And wealth is the only virtue that survives the dampness of the earth. Everything else—your righteousness, Katherine’s martyr complex, this quaint little clockmaker’s refuge—is merely decorative."
"You died," Maya said, her voice steadying as she met his gaze head-on. She did not shrink back. She did not reach for my hand as she had when she was nine years old. "We buried you. The probate court closed the Sterling & Cross accounts. The assets were placed under provisional escrow."
"Provisional," Arthur echoed, tapping his cane once against the floorboards. "A lovely word. It means *waiting for the rightful owner to claim the key*. Did you truly believe a man who spent forty years maneuvering through the banking secrecy laws of three continents would allow his entire life's work to be dissolved into a charitable trust by two rebellious daughters and an illegitimate grandchild?"
May you like
"She is my daughter," I snarled, stepping between him and Maya. "And she has more right to this bloodline than whatever hollow shell of a man is standing in this room."
Arthur’s eyes turned to flint. "Then let us see what that bloodline is worth when the midnight bell tolls."
