Chapter 1 - The Midnight Ambush
The cold polished marble of the Chicago penthouse hallway caught the reflection of pure lethal panic.
Twenty-one-year-old Chloe Vance scrambled backward across the slick floor as the heavy thud of heels echoed like gunfire behind her.
Her pale-blue satin evening gown twisted around her trembling knees as she sprinted away from the monster wearing grandmotherly silver hair.
Behind her charged sixty-nine-year-old Evelyn Vance, the matriarch whose polite smile had ruled high society for half a century.
Evelyn was no longer the graceful billionaire hostess of the evening's gala.
Her sharp, aristocratic features were twisted into an animalistic snarl of raw, venomous terror and rage.
Clutched in Evelyn’s manicured right hand was a brutal, industrial steel claw hammer with a scarred wooden handle.
The dark-purple velvet of Evelyn’s designer evening gown whipped against the cream-paneled walls as she closed the distance.
Heavy pearls rattled against the matriarch's chest with every violent, lunging stride she took.
In Chloe’s white-knuckled grip, her black smartphone remained locked in vertical recording mode, the tiny red indicator light pulsing steadily.
"Give me that phone, you little bitch!" Evelyn shrieked, her voice stripping away fifty years of practiced refinement.
Chloe did not look back, her hazel eyes wild with pure survival instinct as she lunged down the long, gilded corridor.
Her white designer heels slipped against the polished Italian stone, nearly sending her crashing into a massive antique pedestal.
Behind her, the unmistakable whoosh of cleaved air announced the descending steel head of the hammer.
The heavy tool whipped past Chloe’s chestnut-brown curls by a fraction of an inch, close enough to ruffle her hair.
A scream tore through Chloe's throat as she ducked beneath the arc of the lethal swing.
The steel hammer slammed directly into the solid mahogany frame of a private suite door with a deafening, bone-rattling crack.
Splinters of antique wood exploded into the hallway, raining sharp debris across Chloe’s bare shoulders.
The impact shuddered up Evelyn’s arm, but the older woman did not even flinch at the shockwave.
Evelyn ripped the embedded claw from the mangled doorframe with terrifying, frantic strength.
Her knuckles were white, her eyes bulging with the realization that her empire would burn if Chloe escaped the hallway alive.
Chloe scrambled past the gouged timber, her breath tearing through her chest in ragged, desperate sobs.
She held the smartphone against her sternum like a shield containing the ultimate radioactive truth.
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Behind them, the distant sounds of jazz and laughing banquet guests down the distant hall seemed like a hallucination.
Evelyn reset her grip on the wooden handle, raised the heavy steel above her shoulder once more, and charged.
