Chapter 98 - Shadows over the Shetland Bastion
"I stopped being silent the moment I walked out of your house, Eleanor," I spoke directly into the elevator's call grille, my voice steady, devoid of the tremor that used to seize my throat whenever she entered a room.
*"Oh, please,"* she scoffed with a dismissive sigh. *"You walked out with our money. You destroyed your brother's future. You left your father to rot in a public asylum. Did you really think you were the master of your own destiny? Every breath you took after leaving Connecticut was permitted because you were leading Vance directly to Sarah's hidden vaults."*
The elevator climbed higher. The air grew colder, whistling through the gaps in the iron cage as the wind from the sea battered the upper superstructure.
*"Sarah was a monster, Emily,"* Eleanor continued, her tone conversational, as if we were discussing the flower arrangements for Thanksgiving dinner. *"She hoarded trillions in sovereign funds while holding our family by the throat. She forced me to submit to genetic harvesting in Zurich. She took my second child from my womb before she took her first breath. But Sarah is dead now. And thanks to you, the scuttle protocol unlocked the primary accounts. All I need now is the child's biometric authorization, and the Sterling Trust becomes mine."*
"And Vance?" I asked, checking the slide on my weapon. "Is he your lapdog, or is he waiting to slit your throat the moment the funds clear?"
A sharp pause hung on the line. Just long enough to betray the hairline fracture in her composure.
*"Vance knows his place,"* she replied, though a cold edge had crept into her syllables. *"And unlike you, he understands loyalty."*
"Vance is a mercenary, mother. You gave him access to the keys of the kingdom. You think he's going to let an aging socialite walk away with the prize?"
The elevator shuddered to a halt.
The floor indicator blinked: *LEVEL 4 — OBSERVATION COMMAND.*
The heavy steel doors began to part.
I didn't step through the center. I dropped to a low crouch, rolling out hard to the left behind an angled steel support pillar just as a hail of automatic gunfire tore through the empty elevator cage.
The observation deck was a vast, circular room wrapped in floor-to-ceiling reinforced glass, looking out over the boiling black sea three hundred feet below.
At the center of the room sat a massive circular terminal, glowing with the amber interface of the global banking network. Standing near the glass wall was Eleanor Sterling.
She wore a pristine, cream-colored cashmere coat, completely untouched by the mud, blood, and rain that covered me. Her silver-streaked hair was pinned in an elegant chignon. In her hand, she held a glass of amber scotch.
May you like
And beside her, holding a suppressed tactical pistol against the temple of a weeping, trembling seven-year-old girl, stood Vance.
***
