Chapter 25 - The Red Heel on the Dock
The subway tunnel beneath Boston was freezing, smelling of damp limestone, ancient iron, and the sharp, ozone tang of the third rail twenty feet below the drainage ledge.
Khloe and I stumbled through the darkness for forty minutes, guided only by the dying battery of my phone. Nathan had finally exhausted himself, his frantic wails reducing to small, pathetic whimpers against his mother’s chest. His face was blotchy, his breathing slightly congested from the trace smoke, but he was alive.
When we finally forced open an emergency street grate near South Station, the dawn light was breaking across the harbor. The rain had stopped, replaced by a dense, suffocating sea fog that wrapped around the brick buildings like a shroud.
Khloe sat on the wet curb, rocking Nathan back and forth. Her face was smudged with soot and dried blood. She didn't ask about Isabella. She didn't ask about the blast.
She already knew.
My phone, miraculously still catching a faint signal through the fog, buzzed in my pocket.
It was an unknown number.
I hit speaker and held it between Khloe and me.
"Mark," a voice said.
It wasn't Anthony. It wasn't Catherine.
It was Isabella.
Her voice was barely a whisper, bubbling with the wet, rattling sound of internal bleeding.
"Bella?" Khloe gasped, lunging toward the phone. "Bella! Where are you? Where did they take you?"
"The... the lake house," Isabella choked out, her breath hitching in agonizing pain. "He didn't... he didn't die in the hospital, Khloe. The hospital was a staged buyout. The doctors... the lawyers... even the coroner was on his payroll. He faked his death so the federal fraud division couldn't seize the primary trust."
"Who is he, Bella?" Khloe cried, tears streaming through the soot on her cheeks. "Tell me!"
"He isn't our father," Isabella gasped, the line crackling with static. "He’s the man who bought us. All three of us. We were never his daughters. We were... we were his collateral."
A loud, metallic crash sounded on the other end of the line, followed by the heavy, measured footsteps of expensive dress shoes on hardwood.
*"Give me the phone, Isabella,"* Anthony’s calm, cultured voice came through the speaker.
*"Go to hell,"* Isabella spat.
The sound of a brutal, wet impact followed. Isabella groaned, the phone clattering against what sounded like wooden planks.
Then, Anthony’s voice came through the line, crystal clear, as if he were standing right beside us in the Boston fog.
*"You have twelve hours, Khloe,"* the voice said, smooth, authoritative, terrifyingly familiar. *"Come to the boathouse at Lake Winnipesaukee. Bring the flash drive. Bring the baby. If you call the police, I will execute Isabella on live video and send the link to every media outlet on the Eastern Seaboard."*
*"Why Nathan?"* Khloe screamed into the phone, her voice cracking with pure, unadulterated mother's rage. *"Why my baby, you monster?!"*
A soft, chilling chuckle echoed through the receiver.
*"Because, my dear Khloe,"* Anthony whispered, *"Nathan isn't your son. Check his blood type from the hospital discharge paperwork. Catherine didn't implant your embryo six months ago. She implanted hers. And the father... was me."*
The line went dead.
Khloe froze. Her eyes dropped slowly, mechanically, down to the child sleeping peacefully against her chest.
She reached into her coat pocket, her trembling fingers pulling out the hospital discharge envelope she had kept folded in her wallet since the day she gave birth—the one document she had never bothered to open because she had trusted the doctors, trusted her husband, trusted the world she had built.
With shaking hands, she unfolded the medical report.
Her gaze locked onto the blood type comparison chart.
A single, silent tear fell from her chin, splashing onto the printed page.
Before she could speak, a black town car slid silently out of the morning fog, stopping ten feet from where we sat on the wet curb.
The rear door clicked open.
Stepping out onto the damp pavement, wearing a blood-stained cashmere trench coat and a single, immaculate red high heel, was Catherine.
May you like
She wasn't in handcuffs.
And in her hand was a silver handgun, pointed directly at Nathan's head.
