Chapter 15 - The Final Thread
“Julian…” Victoria’s voice failed her, her mind fracturing at the sight before her.
Standing over their mother wasn't a broken, weeping coward dragging a shattered leg. His posture was completely erect, his suit immaculate, his movements sharp and precise. There was no limp. There were no facial lacerations.
“Did you really think I would be in that chapel, Victoria?” the man asked, his voice dripping with smooth, contemptuous amusement. “Did you really think a Vance would stand under a ten-ton chandelier on his own wedding day?”
Evelyn lowered her gun half an inch, her violet eyes widening with sudden, horrific comprehension. “A double. Julian used a surgically altered double.”
“Give the lady a prize,” the man laughed softly. “My pathetic cousin Thomas owed fifty million in gaming debts in Macau. A few plastic surgery sessions in Singapore, and he looked enough like me to fool society guests, the paparazzi, and even my sweet, gullible bride. He took the fall, Arthur took the grave, and I inherited the entire multi-billion-dollar Blackwood portfolio without spending a single day in a federal courtroom.”
On the gurney, Eleanor Cross groaned weakly, her eyelids fluttering behind the plastic oxygen mask. Her frail fingers twitched, reaching blindly toward the sound of her daughters’ voices.
“Step back, Evelyn,” Julian warned, his thumb resting firmly on the syringe plunger positioned directly over Eleanor’s IV port. “This is a concentrated neurotoxin. Five milligrams into this line, and dear mother’s heart stops in four seconds. Drop your weapons. Both of you.”
Evelyn’s knuckles went white against the grip of her pistol. “You kill her, you die before you hit the floor, Julian.”
“Perhaps,” Julian smiled coldly. “But she dies first. And you will have spent three years burning in hell, crawling through blood and glass, only to watch her die right in front of you. Is that a gamble you want to take?”
Victoria looked at her sister. Evelyn’s scarred face was twitching with uncontrollable agony. The unstoppable specter was completely paralyzed by the life of the woman on the gurney.
Victoria felt something inside her break—and rebuild itself into something dangerous.
“He’s right, Evelyn,” Victoria said calmly, unhooking her tactical vest and letting it drop heavily to the floor. “Put the gun down.”
Evelyn looked at Victoria in utter shock. “Tori, no!”
“Do it,” Victoria commanded, stepping forward with her hands raised, her eyes fixed directly on Julian’s smiling face. “Julian doesn't want mother dead. If she dies, the biological stabilization code dies with her. That’s why you kept her alive for three years, isn't it, Julian? You couldn't replicate the compound without her active brain function.”
Julian’s smile tightened slightly. “You always were the smarter sister, Victoria.”
“Which is why you need me,” Victoria continued, taking another slow, measured step toward the gurney. “I hold the legal trustee power. I can authorize the export patents right now from the terminal. Let mother go, let Evelyn walk, and I will sign whatever you put in front of me.”
Evelyn slowly lowered her pistol, laying it onto the floor with a hollow metallic click.
Julian’s eyes gleamed with triumphant greed. “Sensible to the end, my darling. Walk over to the terminal. Enter your foundation biometric key.”
Victoria walked past Evelyn, stepping within three feet of Julian. She looked down at her mother’s pale, beloved face. Eleanor’s eyes opened faintly, recognizing her youngest daughter through the haze of narcotics.
“I love you, Mom,” Victoria whispered.
Then, with a sudden, savage violence that no one in the room anticipated, Victoria did not reach for the terminal.
Her hand plunged into the pocket of her cashmere coat, pulling out the broken, sharp-edged silver shard of her shattered wedding necklace—the heavy emerald pendant she had kept hidden since the chapel.
Before Julian could depress the plunger, Victoria drove the jagged silver blade straight into Julian’s throat.
Blood erupted in a violent crimson fountain, splashing across Victoria’s face and the sterile white walls.
Julian’s eyes bulged in absolute shock. The syringe slipped from his nerveless fingers, shattering against the tile. He choked, grasping at the silver metal protruding from his carotid artery, staggering backward into a shelf of glass beakers that collapsed around him in a deafening crash.
He collapsed to the floor, his hands clawing at his throat, his breath coming in wet, drowning rattles.
Victoria stood over him, her face covered in blood, her eyes wide, cold, and entirely transformed.
Evelyn lunged forward, catching the IV line before it detached, throwing her arms around Eleanor, who began to sob weakly through her mask.
“Tori…” Evelyn gasped, looking at her sister with a mixture of awe and profound grief.
Victoria looked down at her hands, dripping with Julian’s lifeblood. The sweet, compliant society girl had died on the altar in New York.
Across the room, an alarm began to wail shrilly through the facility.
Red emergency lights flashed against the walls. A mechanized voice resonated through the speakers:
Perimeter breach detected. External tactical units entering Level 3. Self-destruct protocol armed: Five minutes to facility lockdown.
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Victoria picked up Evelyn’s discarded pistol from the floor, racked the slide with a steady, unyielding hand, and looked toward the steel blast doors.
“We’re getting out of here,” Victoria said, her voice sounding like steel wrapped in velvet. “All three of us.”
