Chapter 121 - The Key to the Nursery
"You tried to kill my children, mother!" I roared, the sound tearing through the blizzard howling through the breached courtyard.
Eleanor offered a faint, chilling smile that barely moved the taut skin of her cheeks.
"I tried to preserve an empire that took three generations of real blood to build," she replied smoothly. "You were always too sentimental, Claire. Just like your father. You think the world operates on love and domestic bliss? The world operates on capital and leverage. Your children were an inconvenience to the succession. Evelyn understands that. Evelyn knows what duty requires."
Beside her, Evelyn swallowed hard, her mouth opening and closing like a landed fish, unable to meet my eyes.
"They're alive, Eleanor," Mark stepped forward, raising his weapon toward the glass booth. "The crash was an extraction. Leo and Maya are outside your reach."
For the first time, a crack appeared in Eleanor’s icy composure. Her pale eyes flicked from Mark to the terminal screens behind her, then back to me. A slow, venomous sneer curled the corner of her crimson lips.
"Are they, Mark?" she purred through the speaker.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. A sudden, paralyzing dread swept through the courtyard, colder than the Arctic gale tearing through the blast doors.
Eleanor picked up a satellite phone from the command desk and turned the small video screen toward the bulletproof glass, pressing it flat against the surface.
The image was the same sunlit kitchen in Norway.
Only now, the room was not peaceful.
Standing behind the wooden chairs where my children sat were three men in tactical gear, their submachine guns resting casually against the wooden backs of the chairs. Maya was crying silently, her small face buried in her sleeves. Leo was staring straight ahead, his tiny fists clenched on the tabletop, frozen with terror.
And standing by the bay window, calmly pouring a glass of milk from the refrigerator, was a man I had known since childhood—my father, Arthur Blackwood, whom I believed had died of a heart attack five years ago.
"Did you really believe Mark was the only one who knew how to fake a death?" Eleanor whispered through the intercom, her voice dripping with triumphant malice. "The coordinates were compromised forty minutes ago, Claire. The extraction team in Trondheim was never Mark's. They were on my payroll before he even finished his covert training."
The world tilted beneath my boots. I looked at Mark.
Mark was staring at the screen, the color draining completely from his face until he looked like a corpse once more. His carbine lowered a fraction of an inch, his fingers slackening against the pistol grip.
"Mark..." I whispered, my voice trembling on the edge of the abyss. "Mark, what did you do?"
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Eleanor leaned closer to the microphone, her voice dropping into a soft, deadly purr that echoed over the roaring wind and the thudding scuttle timer counting down its final three minutes.
"You have two minutes to hand over the master encryption drive, Claire," Eleanor said softly. "Or your father will finish in that kitchen what Mark was too sentimental to execute in the ravine."
