Chapter 9 - Blood Ties
Eleanor moved with the desperate, feral speed of a cornered animal. She didn't scream; she didn't hesitate. She threw herself through the doorway, driving the eight-inch shard of thick glass straight into Vincent’s shoulder.
Vincent shouted in shock and agony as the jagged glass sheared through cashmere and flesh. The gun went off with a muffled thwip, the bullet burying itself harmlessly into the ceiling plaster. The recoil threw him off balance, and he stumbled back into Clara’s private study, knocking over a brass floor lamp.
""You monster!"" Eleanor shrieked, clawing at her son's face with her bare nails. ""I gave you an empire! I covered for your father's rotting corpse for you!""
Vincent snarled, his cultured veneer dissolving into savage brutality. He struck his mother with a heavy backhand, sending the frail woman crashing against Clara’s glass bookcase. Books and trophies rained down around her. Vincent raised the pistol toward his mother's head, rage twisting his features.
""Die then, you old hag—""
He never finished the sentence.
Clara vaulted into the room, grabbing the heavy brass judicial seal statue from her desk. With all the force in her body, she brought the five-pound bronze emblem down across Vincent’s wrist.
The sound of snapping bone was sickeningly loud. Vincent howled, dropping the pistol onto the Persian rug. Before he could reach for it with his left hand, Clara stepped forward and kicked the weapon down the hallway, straight into the waiting hands of Deputy Marshal Miller, who had just cleared the threshold.
Miller slammed Vincent against the mahogany wall, shoving the barrel of his service weapon beneath the young billionaire's chin.
""Move a single muscle,"" Miller growled, ""and I'll paint this wall with your trust fund.""
Vincent slumped, his arm hanging limp, his trench coat soaked in his own crimson blood.
Clara stood above Eleanor, who was sobbing brokenly on the floor among shattered glass and shredded legal texts. Clara reached down, picked up the gray dossier from where it had fallen, and dusted it off.
May you like
""Court,"" Clara said, panting slightly as she straightened her tattered robe, ""is still in session.""
Cliffhanger: A loud chime echoed from Vincent's coat pocket—a satellite phone displaying an encrypted prompt requiring a fingerprint verification to halt an automated offshore asset burn.
