Chapter 26 - The Barrel Against the Swaddle
The Boston fog felt like damp wool suffocating my throat. Ten feet away, Catherine stood under the flickering amber streetlamp, her blood-stained cashmere trench coat billowing against the morning chill. She stood on one foot, the other bare and bloody against the wet pavement where her missing red heel should have been. Her face was chalk-white, eyes dilated into two pools of unhinged fury.
The silver barrel of the revolver didn't shake. It was leveled squarely between Nathan’s tiny, sleeping brows.
"Give me the child, Mark," Catherine said, her voice a rusted whisper that barely carried over the harbor waves slapping against the seawall. "You don't even know what you're holding. You never did."
Behind me, Khloe made a sound that wasn't human—a strangled, animalistic sob born from the marrow of a mother’s worst nightmare. Her arms tightened around the bundle in her fleece jacket, pressing the hospital discharge papers against Nathan's chest. The paper was already ruined, soaked through with her tears.
"Stay back, Catherine!" I bellowed, stepping forward to put my entire torso between the gun and my family. My heart was slamming against my ribs like a caged beast. "The police know everything. The depository, the embryos, Anthony's accounts—it's all on the drive!"
A ghastly smile stretched Catherine’s cracked lips, exposing teeth flecked with red. "The police? You think Anthony answers to cops? He owns the precinct that cleared this dock an hour ago. He sent me to collect what belongs to him before he cuts Isabella's throat at Winnipesaukee." She cocked the hammer. The sharp, mechanical *click* cut through the fog like a razor. "He wants his heir. The boy stays alive. You two... don't matter."
"He isn't yours!" Khloe screamed, lunging from behind my shoulder, her fingernails clawing at the empty air. "I carried him! I bled for thirty-six hours on that operating table! I felt his heart beat inside my own body!"
"You were an incubator, sister," Catherine hissed, taking a limping step forward. "A clean, moral vessel with no criminal record and perfect vitals. Anthony needed someone who wouldn't be audited by the offshore trust trustees. My eggs. Anthony's seed. Carried by the dutiful, pathetic little saint Khloe."
I saw her weight shift. Her bare foot slipped slightly on an oily patch of asphalt.
It was a split second. A heartbeat.
I didn't think. I drove my boots into the curb, launching my body forward in a low tackle. Catherine’s eyes widened in shock. The gun exploded, a deafening blast of orange fire that scorched the air above my ear. The smell of sulfur and burning wool hit my nostrils as my shoulder collided with her ribs.
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We slammed into the hood of the black town car. Metal groaned under our weight. Catherine shrieked, clawing at my eyes with manicured nails, but I gripped her wrist, smashing it repeatedly against the wiper cowl until the silver revolver slipped from her numb fingers and skittered across the wet hood, plunging into the storm drain below.
"Run!" I roared back at Khloe, pinning Catherine down by her throat. "Get in our car! Khloe, RUN!"
