Chapter 46 - The Breach
Inside, the living room was a scene of carnage.
Furniture was shredded by gunfire, feathers from down pillows floating through the thick, acrid haze like macabre snow. Sarah was slumped against the kitchen counter, holding a bloody shoulder, her shotgun empty on the floor beside her.
"Emma..." Sarah wheezed, coughing violently as the heat from the porch fire began to crawl across the ceiling. "The pantry... he found the trapdoor..."
A sudden coldness seized my chest. "Where is he?"
Before Sarah could answer, a hand shot out of the smoke from the hallway, grabbing my wrist with crushing strength. A steel barrel pressed cold and hard against my temple.
"Drop it, little sister," Caleb Vance whispered behind my ear.
He stepped out of the shadow, dragging me back against his chest as a human shield just as Campbell charged through the shattered doorway, weapon drawn.
"Federal agent! Drop the weapon!" Campbell shouted, his gun pinned on Caleb's forehead.
"Take another step, Agent Campbell, and her brains will paint the ceiling before your round clears the barrel," Caleb said evenly.
In the flickering firelight, I finally saw his face. He looked terrifyingly like Arthur. He possessed our father's sharp, aquiline nose, the piercing green eyes, and the cruel, symmetrical jawline that had dominated boardrooms for forty years. But whereas my father hid his malice behind tailored charity galas, Caleb wore his darkness like a tailored suit. He was dressed in a dark wool trench coat, completely unbothered by the smoke and flames licking at the rafters above us.
"You're too late, Emma," Caleb murmured against my hair, his voice dripping with aristocratic mockery. "The little burden is already secure. In fact, she's right behind that pantry door, clutching that pathetic music box. All it takes is one spark down that trapdoor shaft, and Arthur's legitimate line ends tonight."
"She is a six-year-old child!" I choked out, fighting against his iron grip. "Take the money! Take the Swiss accounts, take the trust, take everything Arthur left! Just let her walk away!"
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Caleb smiled—a thin, razor-sharp grin that chilled me more than the freezing wind pouring through the broken windows. "You still don't understand, do you? It was never just about the money. Arthur discarded my mother like garbage when he decided Eleanor Vance looked better on a campaign poster. He left me to rot in an Austrian boarding school while you grew up in a mansion, receiving trust funds and piano lessons. I don't just want the inheritance, Emma. I want to erase every trace of Arthur's second family from the earth."
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