Chapter 34 - The Mother's Blood
Isabella clung to the wooden pilings of the slip, shivering so violently her teeth were clacking like castanets. I pulled myself halfway onto the dock, my muscles numb with hypothermia, staring into Anthony’s manic eyes.
"Anthony, stop!" I yelled, holding up my freezing hands. "The child won't survive the burn! If Nathan dies, your transplant fails! You die within a month!"
"I'm already dying, you fool!" Anthony screamed, his thumb pulling back the heavy hammer of the flare gun. "If I can't have my lineage, I'll burn this whole miserable family to ash!"
Khloe didn't scream. She didn't plead.
She looked down at the flare gun pressed against her chest. Then, she slowly raised her eyes to look Anthony dead in the face.
"You think Nathan has your blood, Anthony?" Khloe whispered, her voice chillingly calm.
Anthony froze, his finger pausing on the trigger. "What did you say?"
"You think Catherine used your sample?" Khloe gave a soft, mocking laugh that echoed through the dripping boathouse. "Catherine hated you more than she loved money. The morning she went to the storage bank... she didn't take your vial, Anthony. She took the vial from the donor Isabella picked out three years ago. The anonymous donor from the Boston Medical registry."
"You're lying!" Anthony roared, his veins bulging in his forehead. "I saw the paperwork! The hospital blood type—"
"The blood type matched *me*," Khloe said, stepping forward, pushing her chest harder against the barrel of the flare gun, daring him. "Nathan is Type O-negative. You're Type AB, Anthony. An AB father *cannot* produce an O-negative child. Basic high school biology, you arrogant bastard."
Anthony’s eyes widened in sheer, paralyzing horror. The foundational lie of his entire grand scheme crumbled in his mind in a fraction of a second.
"No..." he stammered, his hand trembling. "No, that's impossible... she wouldn't..."
That single moment of hesitation was all Khloe needed.
She drove the heel of her boot down onto Anthony’s broken wrist.
Anthony howled in agony, the flare gun pointing upward as his finger reflexively yanked the trigger.
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*THUMP-BOOM!*
A blinding sphere of red phosphorus screamed into the wooden rafters, embedding itself in the dry pine ceiling. Sparks showered down like a waterfall of burning gold. Within three seconds, the old cedar shingles caught, and a wall of roaring orange flame tore across the roof of the boathouse.
