Chapter 23 - Sins of the Sire
"Ledger?" I echoed, my head spinning. "The Bloodline Ledger? Dad, you said it was destroyed in the vault!"
"He lied to you, Clara," my mother said, her finger tightening on the trigger. "Arthur has made a career out of lying to women who trust him. He stole it from Eleanor the night you were born, and he used it to blackmail both of our families into hiding. He didn't hide you in rural Illinois to protect you. He hid you as collateral."
"Shut up, Julianne!" my father shouted, lunging forward despite his cracked ribs.
Nicholas caught him, shoving him back against the concrete retaining wall of the inlet. "Enough!" Nicholas bellowed, his voice cutting through the rising wind. "Look up, both of you!"
Through the thick bank of morning fog rolling off the lake, twin searchlights stabbed down from the cliffs. Eleanor's private gunships had arrived. The red laser sights painted dancing crimson dots across the wet gravel of the pier.
"They have the high ground!" Nicholas yelled, drawing his sidearm from his coat. "If we don't clear the shoreline in sixty seconds, heavy caliber fire will shred this entire cove!"
Julianne’s eyes flicked upward toward the bluffs, her jaw tightening. "Step on board," she commanded, stepping aside from the cabin hatchway. "Move! Now!"
Nicholas shoved my father onto the boat first, then grabbed my waist and hauled me over the gunwale. The moment my boots hit the fiberglass deck, Julianne slammed the throttle forward.
The twin turbocharged diesel engines roared with feral power. The boat surged forward with such violent acceleration that I was thrown hard against the leather bench inside the bridge.
A hail of high-caliber rounds instantly tore into the water behind us, churning the dark waves into frothing geysers. One bullet punched through the reinforced rear windshield, showering my lap in safety glass.
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"Clara, down!" Nicholas tackled me to the floorboards, shielding my head with his arms as more metal screamed through the cabin structure.
Beside the helm, Julianne spun the wheel with white-knuckled precision, veering hard into the dense, blinding wall of fog where Lake Michigan swallowed the horizon.
