Chapter 40 - The Blood Pact in the Snow
The drive south through Massachusetts and Connecticut was a blur of gray asphalt, torrential sleet, and suffocating tension. Every time a highway patrol vehicle cruised past in the opposite lane, my chest seized, waiting for the sudden flash of red-and-blue lights in the rearview mirror.
Anthony's body was currently drifting in the freezing currents of Lake Winnipesaukee, trapped under the charred debris of the boathouse. The local authorities would find him eventually. It was only a matter of hours before the ballistics and the registration on the Defender tied the crime scene back to us.
Inside the car, the silence was thick enough to choke on.
Khloe sat in the back, nursing Nathan in silence, her eyes glued to the window as the snow gave way to the dirty, industrial rain of northern New Jersey. Isabella sat beside her, curled into a ball against the opposite door, looking smaller and more broken than I had ever seen her.
"Why, Isabella?" Khloe asked suddenly, her voice cracking the heavy silence like a gunshot. "Out of everything Anthony offered you... why did you turn against your own sister?"
Isabella didn't look up. Her hands were clasped tightly in her lap, her fingernails digging bloody crescents into her palms.
"Because he showed me the debt," Isabella whispered.
"What debt?"
"Dad didn't die of a heart attack, Khloe," Isabella choked out, her shoulders trembling. "He died because he owed Catherine Vance twenty-two million dollars in defaulted shipping loans. When he died, Catherine called me into her office in Boston. I was twenty-two years old. She told me that if I didn't keep Anthony informed of everything you did—who you dated, where you worked, your medical history—she would call in the personal guarantees Dad had signed on the family home and your trust fund. She would have left you on the street with nothing."
Khloe let out a harsh, bitter laugh. "So you sold me out to save the family house?!"
"No!" Isabella sobbed, turning to face Khloe with tears streaming down her pale cheeks. "I did it because Catherine told me Anthony was in love with you! She told me they wanted to merge the families properly! I thought... I thought if you married him, the debt would disappear! But then you met Marcus. You fell in love with a man who had no money, no pedigree, no power. And Catherine told Anthony that if he couldn't have you as a wife, he would take what was inside you."
The horror of those words settled over the car like a suffocating shroud.
"Anthony didn't want you, Khloe," Isabella continued, her voice trembling with self-loathing. "He wanted your genetic markers. Catherine’s bloodline has an incurable hereditary cardiovascular defect. The Vance men don't live past fifty, and the women develop arterial degeneration in their forties. But our mother’s family... our mother’s family carried an extraordinarily rare HLA-homozygous cellular structure. It’s the universal genetic key. Any stem cells derived from our maternal lineage can be grafted into Catherine’s body without host-versus-graft rejection."
I gripped the steering wheel so hard the leather groaned under my hands. "They farmed her. From the very beginning... Anthony's entire pursuit of Khloe was a genetic harvest."
"Yes," Isabella whispered. "Nathan was the decoy. Anthony was going to keep Nathan to claim the primary family estate in Massachusetts. But the girl... the twin... she was bred for Catherine. She’s being prepared right now for a full marrow and stem-cell extraction at the clinic in Zurich."
Khloe didn't scream this time. She didn't cry.
She reached into her coat, pulled out a small, steel utility knife that had been sitting in Anthony’s glove compartment, and clicked the blade open with a sharp, metallic *snick*.
"Khloe!" I shouted, glancing in the rearview mirror.
Khloe didn't move toward Isabella. Instead, she pressed the razor-sharp edge of the blade directly against her own palm and sliced across the skin, leaving a deep, crimson welt that welled instantly with dark blood.
She held her bleeding hand out toward her sister.
"You want to survive this, Isabella?" Khloe said, her voice ice-cold, devoid of any sisterly warmth. "You swear on our mother's grave that you will walk into that clinic with us, you will get us past Catherine's security, and you will help me take my daughter back. And if you hesitate, if you look at Catherine with one shred of fear or obedience... I will cut your throat myself before Marcus can even pull me off you."
Isabella stared at the blood dripping onto Khloe's jeans.
Without a word, Isabella reached out, took the blade from Khloe’s fingers, and dragged it across her own right palm.
May you like
She slammed her bleeding hand into Khloe's, their blood intermingling, running down their wrists in thick, dark streams.
"I swear it," Isabella whispered through clenched teeth. "I will bring my niece home, or I won't leave Switzerland alive."
