Chapter 27 - The Parlor of Vengeance
"You're late, Sylvester!" Victoria screamed, her voice echoing shrilly off the decaying vaulted ceilings. Her designer dress was torn and filthy, her makeup smeared across her pale face, making her look like a manic phantom. "Did you bring the papers? Did you bring the signed surrender?"
"Where is Lucas, Victoria?" I stepped forward into the lantern light, my voice cutting through her mania like an executioner’s blade.
Victoria’s bloodshot eyes locked onto me, and a twisted sneer contorted her lips. "The beggar speaks! Look at you, wearing body armor, trying to play soldier! You are nothing! You were a waitress serving hors d'oeuvres, and you will always be a peasant scrubbing floors!"
"Show me the boy," Sylvester said, his voice dropping into a register that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. He didn't even raise his weapon; he simply walked forward, each step deliberate, echoing like the toll of a funeral bell.
"Stop right there, Vance!" Sterling Caldwell’s voice boomed from the shadows of the upper mezzanine.
Sterling stepped into the light. He looked ghastly—haggard, his tailored suit rumpled and covered in stains, but his eyes burned with madness. And beside him, held tightly by a hulking mercenary whose thick hand covered his mouth, was Lucas.
Lucas’s eyes went wide when he saw me. He thrashed against the mercenary’s grip, his muffled cries tearing at my soul. He was bruised, his cheek red from where Victoria had struck him, but he was alive.
"Lucas!" I choked out, taking a step forward.
Sterling immediately pressed the barrel of a pistol against Lucas’s temple. "One more step, Elena, and his brains will decorate this marble!"
May you like
I froze, my breath catching in my throat, my hands trembling as I raised them slowly in surrender.
"Look at this pathetic sight," Sterling gloated, spitting onto the floor. "The almighty Sylvester Vance, brought to heel by a seven-year-old street urchin. Drop your weapons! Both of you! Drop them now, or the boy dies first!"
