Chapter 39 - The Sister's Confession
The connection crackled as Eleanor choked on her own breath.
"You... you know," she whimpered.
"I know everything," I said, watching the snow-covered pine trees blur past the Mercedes’s tinted windows as we sped toward Kloten Airport. "I know about Geneva. I know about the nursery. I know about the twenty thousand dollars a month Sarah paid you to keep me broken, quiet, and ignorant."
"She was going to kill you, Aurelia!" Eleanor shrieked, the panic escalating into shrill hysteria. "You don't understand what Sarah is! She's a monster! When our father died, she threatened to drown you in the lake if I didn't sign over the voting proxies! I took you to save you! I took you to America to give you a life!"
"You didn't give me a life, Eleanor," I said, each word striking like a hammer on an anvil. "You gave me Richard."
The line went dead silent. Only the static of the satellite relay hissed between us.
"You let him beat me," I continued, feeling no anger now, only a terrifying, pristine clarity. "From the time I was eight years old. You stood by the stove while he broke my fingers for dropping a glass. You watched him drag me by the hair across the living room because I didn't fold his laundry correctly. And when I turned eighteen, you made sure I stayed trapped by forging debt in my name, forcing me to pay off Richard’s loans while you bought designer dresses with Sarah’s hush money."
"I had to keep him happy!" Eleanor wept, the tears thick and pathetic. "Richard was violent... if he didn't take it out on you, he would have killed me! Can't you understand that? I was protecting myself! A mother has to survive!"
"You are not my mother," I said. "You were my warden. And the only difference between you and Richard is that Richard was honest about being a beast. You hid behind pearl necklaces and church on Sundays."
"Aurelia, please..." she begged, her voice dropping to a desperate whisper. "They're bringing me to the Cologny estate. Sarah's men... they're still there. Sarah isn't the only one who wanted the sovereign trust. There are others. Men from the syndicate in Milan... the people Richard owed money to! If you bring me there, they will kill us both!"
I frowned, leaning forward against the leather partition. "What syndicate in Milan?"
"Richard didn't just gamble with street bookies!" Eleanor cried out. "He borrowed twelve million dollars from the Castiglione family to fund a shipping line that went belly-up in Genoa! He told them Sarah Sterling would guarantee the debt! When Sarah refused, Castiglione sent mercenaries to Switzerland. They’ve been waiting for the vault to open! They know Sarah is in Zurich, and they know the sovereign codes are in Geneva! Aurelia, you're flying directly into an ambush!"
Before I could answer, the roar of jet engines shattered the audio feed.
"They're landing!" Eleanor screamed, the sound echoing through the receiver. "The plane is touching down! God help me, Aurelia, they're here—"
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The call was abruptly severed by the sharp, concussive crack of automatic gunfire, followed by the sound of shattering glass and the screech of aircraft brakes on wet tarmac.
***
