Chapter 16 - The Sister Nobody Knew Existed
“Did you miss me, darling?” Evelyn’s voice hissed through the tablet’s tiny speaker, her face illuminated by the eerie dashboard light of the fleeing vehicle. Her eyes were sunken and feral, stripped of the polished high-society facade she had worn for years, radiating an unhinged, psychopathic hunger for retribution. “Forty-five years in that concrete sewer, Julian... did you honestly believe I would let myself rot while you and that miserable old hag sipped tea on the terrace?”
Julian grabbed the tablet, his voice trembling with sheer, cold fury as he locked eyes with his fugitive ex-wife through the digital screen. “If you touch a single hair on Maria’s head, Evelyn, there is no corner of this earth where you can hide from me,” Julian spat, every syllable laced with promises of merciless vengeance. “I will tear down every offshore account, every safe house, and hunt you and your sister down like rabid dogs!”
Evelyn threw her head back and laughed, a shrill, piercing sound that ended in a venomous sneer as she leaned directly into the camera lens. “You don't understand the rules of the game yet, Julian,” she hissed, grabbing Maria by her hair and pulling her bruised face into the frame. “Maria has twelve hours before Victoria puts a bullet through her heart, and the only ransom that buys her breath is Eleanor St. Claire herself. You bring your mother to the ruins of Blackwood Manor on the coast at dawn, alone and without your private army, or we mail Maria back to you in pieces.”
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The screen abruptly went black, the connection severed at the source, leaving the grand hall in a silence broken only by the steady dripping of rain from the shattered terrace doors. Detective Vance and Arthur Sterling entered the wreckage, their faces pale as they took in the devastation of the assault. “We tracked the digital ping,” Vance said urgently, holding up his police transceiver. “It bounced through three encrypted satellite relays, but the Blackwood Manor she mentioned... that property was abandoned thirty years ago on the cliffs of Montauk.”
Eleanor stepped into the center of the room, her voice steady and resolute despite the tears streaming down her wrinkled cheeks. “We are going, Julian,” she commanded, her aged eyes flashing with a fierce, motherly authority that brooked no argument. “Maria sacrificed her body to protect me from that woman’s bat, and I will not let an innocent soul die for the sins of the St. Claire family. You drive me to Montauk, my son, and we will finish this war where it began.”
