Chapter 25 - The Scent of Gardenia in the Crosshairs
“Arthur Vance,” I whispered, my voice dripping with venom. “You’re supposed to be buried in the family crypt in Zurich.”
The old man offered a thin, mirthless smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “A tomb is merely a legal convenience for men who control the currencies of nations, my dear. When you reach a certain level of power, life and death are simply accounting entries.”
On the tracks beside me, Dante remained motionless, the dark puddle beneath his back expanding across the gravel.
“Look at what you’ve done to your son,” I said, angling the camera toward Dante’s pale, blood-drenched body. “He’s dying. And you sent death squads to butcher his family.”
“Dante was always sentimental,” Arthur said coldly, without a trace of pity in his voice. “A fatal flaw in our bloodline. He believed love was an asset to be cherished, rather than a liability to be leveraged. When he married you—a girl from the south side of Chicago with nothing to her name but an art degree and stubborn pride—I indulged him. I allowed him his five years of suburban domesticity. But the timeline has expired.”
“Clara is my daughter,” I hissed, stepping closer to the pod where Clara had begun to stir, her tiny fingers pressing against the clear glass. “I carried her. I bled for her. You won’t touch her.”
Arthur leaned forward toward the lens, his expression hardening into cold steel. “Clara’s mitochondrial shell is yours, Lena. But her nuclear sequence carries the Castiglione imperial lineage—the only living key capable of opening the deep vaults under the Swiss Alps. There are six hundred billion dollars, three centuries of sovereign debt notes, and the deeds to twelve multinational banks locked behind her DNA. Do you truly believe a mother’s love can stand against the economic architecture of the modern world?”
“Come down here and find out,” I growled.
“I won’t need to,” Arthur replied smoothly. “Turn around, Lena.”
A cold metal cylinder pressed firmly against the base of my skull.
The scent that filled the damp subway tunnel was unmistakable.
It was gardenia. Strong, sweet, and suffocating.
May you like
“Drop the phone, Lena,” a woman’s voice purred from the darkness behind me. “Or your daughter will watch your head open up like a ripe melon.”
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