Chapter 19 - The Trap at Blackwood Manor
Victoria looked down at the document, her trained mercenary instincts clashing violently with the sudden revelation that their entire life’s mission had been built upon a catastrophic lie engineered by their late mother’s madness. “Evelyn... is this true?” Victoria whispered, looking at her twin sister whose face was twitching with manic instability. Evelyn looked at the paper, then back up at Julian, realizing that her hatred had blinded her to the reality of the fortune she could have inherited peacefully without spilling a drop of blood.
“It doesn't matter anymore!” Evelyn suddenly roared, her sanity snapping entirely as she raised the silver bat with both hands, lunging directly at Eleanor with homicidal fury. “I spent a year in a cage! I watched my beauty rot in the dark! I don't care about the money—I want her dead!” Julian moved with lightning-fast reflexes, drawing his subcompact weapon and lunging forward to intercept the strike, colliding with Evelyn on the wet gravel and wrestling her to the ground as the bat swung wildly through the air.
At that exact second, federal tactical smoke canisters exploded across the perimeter, hissing thick clouds of gray fog over the courtyard as Detective Vance’s snipers opened fire from the tree line. Gunshots cracked like thunderclaps through the coastal mist, dropping the two mercenary guards on the balcony before they could touch the detonator. Victoria raised her rifle to fire at Eleanor, but Maria, using the last ounce of her strength, threw her body against Victoria’s legs, sending both women crashing over the stone railing onto the lower terrace.
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Julian pinned Evelyn to the gravel, wrenching the silver bat from her fingers and tossing it far over the cliff edge into the crashing black waves below. “It’s over, Evelyn!” Julian shouted over the deafening cacophony of sirens, shouting tactical agents, and the pounding ocean surf. Evelyn looked up at him, blood dripping from her split lip, her eyes wide with a terrifying, unearthly delight that made Julian’s skin crawl with sudden, absolute dread.
“It will never be over, Julian,” Evelyn wheezed, laughing through her own blood as she reached into her sleeve and revealed a second detonator switch already glowing solid green. “You brought your mother to Montauk... but who did you leave behind at the estate?” Julian’s heart stopped beating as he realized with horrifying clarity that this coastal mansion had never been the primary target—it was an elaborate, deadly diversion designed to lure Julian and the federal task force a hundred miles away from the true prize.
