Chapter 47 - The Price of Blood
"Don't test me, boy!" Evelyn shrieked, her thumb hovering directly over the red button. "You think I won't pull this trigger? I gave you life! I can take it away!"
"You didn't give me life," David said, his voice dropping into a cold, terrifying calm that cut straight through the howling wind.
Evelyn froze. Her eyes narrowed. "What did you say?"
David reached into his pocket and pulled out the faded, water-resistant paper from Arthur’s notebook. He held it up against the glare of the harbor lights.
"Menninger Clinic, 1989," David said, taking another deliberate step toward the gangway. "Bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy. You never carried me, Evelyn. You were barren. Empty. A hollow shell of a woman who bought an orphan off a dead girl in a Chicago charity ward because you couldn't stand the thought of Arthur having an heir that didn't belong to your sick vanity."
Evelyn’s face drained of every drop of color. Her jaw worked wordlessly, her eyes darting between the paper in David’s hand and his face. For thirty years, this was the secret she had slaughtered people to protect. The foundation of her entire aristocratic identity was a lie.
"Lies..." she whispered, her voice trembling with an insane, vibrating fury. "Arthur forged that... Arthur was a liar! A weak, cowardly dog!"
"Arthur was a coward," David agreed, taking two more steps, closing the distance to twenty feet. "He let you torture me because he was afraid of your money. But you? You're not even a mother. You're just a thief. A kidnapper who stole a baby thirty years ago, and came back to steal another."
"SHUT UP!" Evelyn screamed, raising the detonator skyward.
At that exact split second, Maya let out a piercing shriek and squirmed violently against the heavy cashmere blanket. The child’s tiny flailing arm struck Evelyn across the cheek.
The momentary distraction was all David needed.
He lunged forward like a striking predator, covering the distance to the gangway in three explosive strides.
Evelyn’s eyes widened in realization. "NO!" She jammed her thumb down onto the red detonator button.
*CLICK.*
Nothing happened.
A second of absolute, dead silence hung in the air between them, broken only by the hum of the boat's engines.
David didn't stop. He vaulted the railing onto the deck.
Arthur’s final voice recording played in David’s mind: *I cut the receiver wires to the auxiliary tanks before she tied me up in the elevator... she doesn't know the blast caps are inert.*
Arthur Vance had spent his entire life being a coward, but in his final, dying breath, he had disarmed his wife’s ultimate trap.
Evelyn stared at the dead plastic detonator in horror, then threw it violently at David's head. "GUARDS! KILL HIM!"
A mercenary emerged from the wheelhouse hatch, raising a submachine gun.
David didn't hesitate. He brought the Kimber up and fired twice. Both rounds struck the gunman in the center of the chest, blowing him backward through the glass wheelhouse doors in a shower of glittering shards.
Evelyn backed away toward the stern railing, clutching Maya tightly against her chest, her face contorted in a mask of feral, cornered desperation.
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"Stay back, David!" she hissed, backing toward the foaming black waters of the lake thirty feet below. "I’ll jump! I’ll take her into the deep! You’ll never find our bones!"
***
