Chapter 22 - Blood Ties and Broken Vows
The grand foyer looked like a war zone. Glass crunched beneath my boots as I knelt beside Margaret Vance, wrapping my coat around her shivering shoulders. She coughed weakly, pressing a blood-soaked handkerchief to the gash on her forehead. Despite her age and the brutal assault, the old matriarch's eyes burned with fierce aristocratic fury.
"He... he dared strike his own mother," Margaret whispered, her fingernails digging into my wrist with astonishing strength. "Julian was never my blood in spirit. Clara... you get that baby back. Do whatever you must. Burn down the world if you have to, but bring my grandson home."
"I will, Margaret," I said, my voice steadying into cold granite. "I promise you."
Two private security medics from our vetted executive detail arrived through the shattered front entrance, immediately tending to Marcus's gunshot wound and Margaret's head trauma. Marcus grunted in pain as a tourniquet was applied, but he pushed the medic away with his uninjured arm, locking his gaze onto mine.
"Julian is operating out of the old marina slips near Point Judith," Marcus wheezed, wincing as gauze was packed into the entry wound. "Before the shooter took me down, I saw the tactical insignia on his vest. Grey skull with an anchor. That's Captain Elias Kane's maritime privateers. Disgraced Navy SEALs who do wet work for cartel money. Julian hired them through a shell company in Panama."
"Kane doesn't work for promises," I deduced quickly, pacing the bloodstained hardwood floor. "He works for cold, hard, untraceable cash. Julian doesn't have the money yet. That's why he gave me a sixty-minute deadline."
"Which means Kane hasn't been paid in full," Marcus realized, coughing slightly. "He's holding Noah as collateral against Julian's payout."
My phone chimed with the promised encrypted email. The screen illuminated my face in the dim room, displaying a complex offshore routing interface. Julian was demanding one hundred and eighty million dollars—the entirety of our family's liquid war chest.
I pulled up my personal biometric key. My finger hovered over the verification sensor. I had built that empire from the ashes of my father's business, defending it through corporate backstabbing and Julian's parasitic betrayal. But right now, every single dollar meant nothing compared to the warmth of Noah's tiny breath against my chest.
Yet I knew Julian. Once the funds cleared, Noah wouldn't be returned alive. Dead heirs don't challenge inheritance laws. A mother in mourning would be powerless to strike back.
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"Marcus," I ordered, turning toward the chief of security. "Call our offshore forensic accountants in Zurich. We aren't just sending the money. We are embedding a lethal backdoor virus into the transfer. If Elias Kane wants his blood money, he's going to find out Julian's promise is worthless."
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