Chapter 46 - The Brother’s Voice
At 03:40 AM, my terminal chimed with an incoming encrypted audio transmission.
I plugged my headset in. Through the digital static, a voice broke through—broken, hysterical, completely unraveling.
*"Emily? Emily, please! Please, God, Emily, answer me!"*
It was Marcus.
"I'm here, Marcus," I said, keeping my tone completely devoid of warmth.
*"He's gone crazy, Em! Dad is completely out of his mind!"* Marcus sobbed, his breath hitching in ragged gasps. *"He wired my chair to three sticks of commercial mining dynamite! He said if you don't walk into the Sub-Gallery Nine elevator by four in the morning, he’s going to detonate it himself! He said I’m useless! He said I was a parasite who ruined his legacy!"*
"You *were* a parasite, Marcus," I said coldly. "When Dad threw me across the mahogany dining table on Thanksgiving, you didn't even look up from your roast turkey. You asked Mother to pass the gravy while my face was bleeding onto the antique rug."
There was a stunned, choking silence on the other end of the line.
*"I... I was scared, Emily!"* he screamed, desperate, pathetic. *"He was our father! What was I supposed to do? Fight him? He would have cut me off! He would have left me with nothing!"*
"You chose his money over my life," I replied. "And now his money has tied you to a chair in a salt mine. That is what economists call poetic equilibrium."
*"Emily, don't leave me to die!"* he shrieked, the panic escalating into full-blown delirium. *"Mother! Tell her! Tell her she has to save me!"*
Eleanor lunged forward from the backseat, grabbing the microphone near my neck. "Marcus! Mommy is coming! Emily is bringing the codes! Hold on, baby, just hold on—"
I shoved Eleanor back into her seat with my elbow and cut the audio link.
"You speak again without permission," I told her, "and I leave you on the side of this mountain in the snow without shoes."
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Castiglione checked his watch from the front passenger seat. "We have the perimeter scouts' report. Black Sand has twelve men stationed around the historical mine entrance. But there's an auxiliary air ventilation shaft—unmapped, built in 1938—two kilometers east. If we breach there, we drop directly into the upper gantry of Sub-Gallery Nine."
"We go through the shaft," I said, loading a fresh magazine into my tactical pistol. "Richard wants the primary heir. Let's make sure he gets the full estate liquidation he deserves."
