Chapter 77 - The Confrontation in the Snow
She looked broken, yet manic. The pristine, icy composure that Victoria had worn like armor during the hearings in the county courthouse was entirely gone. Her designer coat was torn at the hem, plastered with wet snow, and her hair was plastered against her pale, manic face.
"You think you're clever, Arthur," she rasped, her voice cutting through the hiss of the falling snow as she walked toward us, the red flare sputtering between her fingers. "You think you won because you walked into that courtroom with your mother's receipts and your cheap theatrical tricks."
I stepped between her and Maya, my hand resting instinctively on the cold iron spanner I had pulled from the valve house floor. "Go home, Victoria. The towers are broadcasting. The entire eastern seaboard knows the Blackwood trust was never yours."
She let out a dry, cracked laugh that sounded horribly out of place in the silent woods. "The trust? You fool. You think this was about the money? You think I cared about thirty million dollars in depreciated timber rights and county bonds?"
She threw the ledger onto the snow between us. The heavy leather-bound volume fell open, its thick parchment pages stained with old dampness.
"My father spent forty years keeping that door locked," Victoria hissed, pointing a trembling, manicured finger toward the mountain ridge behind us. "He spent every dime the family stole from the mill workers to pour twelve feet of quartz over that machine. Because he knew what happens when the clock finishes its cycle. He knew what my sister carried in her blood."
Maya stepped out from behind my coat, her small boots crunching in the snow. "Aunt Victoria," she said quietly.
Victoria flinched as if struck, taking an involuntary step back into the drifts. "Keep her away from me! Don't let her speak!"
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"She's an eight-year-old child," I growled, stepping forward. "You smashed her birthday cake into the mud and laughed in her face because you were terrified of what she represents."
"I did it because she had her mother's eyes!" Victoria screamed, the flare shaking violently in her grip, casting grotesque, dancing shadows across her features. "Because every time she looked at me, I knew that clock was ticking down! The cake... the party... it was all a reminder that I was just the steward. The caretaker of an empty house, waiting for the true heir to grow up and turn the key!"
