Chapter 29 - The Shattered Tribunal
The green glow of the terminal reflected off Marcus Vance’s twisted, unhinged face.
The entire room was in chaos. Dignitaries were screaming, scrambling toward the exits as the magnitude of the financial coup collapsed the markets in real time. Across the globe, sixty billion dollars in assets were instantly locked behind Lily's genetic lock.
"No!" Marcus roared.
Abandoning all pretense of legal decorum, he ripped a compact ceramic automatic pistol from his breast pocket and aimed it directly at Lily’s forehead.
"If I cannot have the mandate," Marcus shrieked, "then the line ends tonight!"
I moved before his finger could fully squeeze the trigger.
I vaulted across the mahogany table, driving my shoulder into Marcus’s ribs with the force of a battering ram. The gun discharged with a deafening crack, the bullet shattering a crystal chandelier overhead, sending a rain of razor-sharp glass showering over the dais.
We hit the floor hard. Marcus clawed at my eyes, spitting curses, but I pinned his wrist against the marble and snapped it backward with a brutal, sickening crunch. The gun skittered away across the slick stone floor. I drove my fist into his jaw, once, twice, until his head bounced off the marble and his eyes rolled back into his skull.
I stood up, breathing heavily, glass crunching under my dress shoes.
Victoria stood frozen behind the podium, her silver hair uncoiling around her shoulders, looking like a defeated, venomous serpent. Canadian federal officers swarmed the dais, their weapons drawn, instantly subduing Marcus’s remaining private guards.
"Victoria de Saint-Cloud," the chief magistrate announced, his voice trembling with outrage, "by order of the International Consular Tribunal, your diplomatic immunity is revoked. You are remanded into federal custody for high treason and conspiracy to commit murder."
Two officers grabbed Victoria’s arms. She didn't struggle, but as she was dragged past me, her cold, hateful eyes locked onto mine.
"You think you won, Julian?" she whispered, a chilling, bloodstained smirk spreading across her lips. "You opened the ledger. You triggered the protocol. You have no idea what Sarah was really running from."
"She was running from you," I growled.
May you like
"No," Victoria hissed as the handcuffs clicked around her wrists. "She was running from what is inside Vault Seven. Go ahead, American. Take the child. Turn the key. See what your beloved bride left waiting for you in the dark."
***
