“YOU BROUGHT THIS ON YOURSELF, EMILY,” My Mother Said After Watching My Father Beat Me at Thanksgiving Dinner, Never Realizing Her Six Words Would Be the Last She Ever Got to Say to the Daughter Who Kept Their Family Afloat.

"That is quite enough theatrics, Eleanor," a calm voice cut through the shadows.

From the darkened alcove behind the hearth, a man stepped into the firelight. He was tall, silver-haired, impeccably groomed, wearing a bespoke charcoal suit that looked as if he had just stepped out of a boardroom in Zurich rather than a castle under siege. His face possessed the exact same sharp, predatory cheekbones I saw in the mirror every single morning.

Julian Croft.

Behind him stood four heavily armed operatives wearing black tactical gear with suppressed carbines leveled at Marcus. Marcus didn't even have time to swing his rifle before a taser lead struck him in the neck, dropping him to the floor in violent, paralyzing convulsions.

"Marcus!" I lunged, but an iron grip caught my arm, twisting it behind my back with clinical, effortless leverage.

"Be still, Helena," Julian said, his voice terrifyingly calm, carrying no anger, no warmth, no humanity at all. "You have your mother's temper. She, too, had a habit of resisting when the situation was already mathematically concluded."

He walked over to Eleanor, looking down at her with the faint disgust one might reserve for an oil stain on a bespoke rug.

"Twenty-six years, Eleanor," Julian murmured, adjusting his cuffs. "You cost me four hundred million in operational overhead searching three continents for this girl. And in the end, she came right back to me because you couldn't resist torturing her over dinner."

"Kill her, Julian," Eleanor hissed, her face twisted in pure malice. "Kill her and take your damn codes! She ruined everything anyway!"

Julian didn't even look at her. He pulled a silver-plated snub-nosed revolver from his inner jacket pocket, pressed the barrel directly against the center of Eleanor’s forehead, and pulled the trigger without breaking his stride.

The gunshot in the enclosed room was deafening.

Eleanor’s head snapped back, her body slumping limp against the leather bindings, the sneer frozen forever on her lifeless face. The woman who had ruled my childhood through cold silence and calculated cruelty was gone in a fraction of a second, discarded like garbage on a carpet.