Chapter 51 - The Elevator Chime
The brushed-steel doors parted with a dry scrape of rubber gaskets.
I expected black tactical vests, suppressed carbines, or the polished Oxford shoes of Lucian’s Swiss security team. Instead, the figure framed in the amber interior light of the car was hunched, shivering violently under a sodden wool coat that smelled of stale tobacco and bilge water.
Julian.
My husband stepped out onto the polished parquet floor of Donald’s private foyer. His jaw was covered in a week’s worth of patchy stubble, his skin gray and mottled by exhaustion. Behind him, clinging to the lapel of his sodden coat with both hands, was Chloe. Her blonde hair hung in damp, ratty strings around a face devoid of makeup, her eyes swollen and red-rimmed from crying. She wore one of Julian’s oversized cashmere sweaters, stained at the hem with dark engine grease.
Julian froze the second he saw the black barrel of Donald’s 9mm pistol pointed directly at the bridge of his nose.
"Amanda," Julian gasped, his voice cracked and thin, like dried parchment scraping over gravel. "Don't shoot. Please... God, Amanda, don't shoot."
Marilyn did not lower her snub-nosed revolver. Her small, sharp frame remained anchored behind the mahogany credenza, her sightline locked onto Chloe’s chest. "Keep your hands visible, Julian. Both of you. Against the mirrored wall. Right now."
"Marilyn, it's me!" Julian choked, his hands trembling as he lifted them above his ears. "They came to the townhouse in Chicago. They took the accounts. They took everything. Lucian’s people... they didn't want the estate to go to probate. They wanted us dead. We barely made it to the rail spur."
"You brought her here," I whispered, the rage burning so hot behind my ribs that it felt icy. Under the thick folds of my down parka, Ruby stirred, letting out a faint whimper against my collarbone. Julian’s eyes flickered down to my chest, widening as he recognized the small bundle tucked beneath my zipper.
"Amanda... you have the baby," Julian stammered, taking a half-step forward.
"Don't move," I said, my finger tightening against the flat steel of the trigger. "Not one inch, Julian. Two days after your father died, you brought that girl into my kitchen. You drank his vintage scotch and told me I was nothing more than an unpaid housekeeper in his empire. You told me you would take everything."
"I was stupid! I didn't know what Father was hiding!" Julian cried out, tears finally spilling over his hollow cheeks. "He set me up! He set all of us up! The Swiss syndicate—they don't care about the will. They don't care about the legal trust. Lucian thinks Donald gave the master key to me. They burned the Chicago office to the ground tonight, Amanda. If they find us, they'll slaughter us like cattle."
"He's telling the truth," Chloe whimpered from behind Julian's shoulder. Her voice lacked every ounce of the smug, venomous cruelty she had displayed across my breakfast counter weeks ago. She was trembling so violently her teeth clicked together. "There were men at the marina. Men with foreign accents and suppressed rifles. They shot Julian’s driver. We had to hide in the coal hopper under the rail docks just to get into this tower."
"They followed you," Marilyn cut in, her legal mind instantly calculating the trajectory of the threat. Her voice was flat, merciless. "Julian, did you use your secondary executive pass at the garage gates?"
Julian blinked, color draining from his face until he looked like a corpse. "I... the gate was locked. I had to swipe my board credentials to override the hydraulic lift."
"You idiot," Marilyn whispered, lowering the hammer of her revolver just enough to cock it again. "You led them directly to the penthouse."
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As if puncturing her words, the main power grid of the tower groaned. The recessed halogen lights in the ceiling flickered once, twice, and died. The hum of the ventilation shafts ground to a shuddering stop, plunging the 45th floor into total, suffocating darkness, broken only by the cold, pale glow of the blizzard outside the floor-to-ceiling glass.
Then, from the emergency stairwell forty feet down the corridor, came the sharp, metallic snap of a pry-bar cracking an industrial fire door.
