Chapter 68 - WHY I LET HER SWING THE BAT
The man did not jump. He did not flinch. He slowly set his crystal glass down on the wooden pew, smoothed the lapels of his thousand-dollar coat, and stood up with effortless grace.
When Charles St. Claire turned to face his son, Julian felt his heart seize. The man looked barely fifty-five, his skin smooth, his dark eyes carrying that same terrifying, sociopathic brilliance that had terrified Julian as a child.
"I never tried to murder you, Julian," Charles said softly, stepping into the flickering candlelight of the altar. "If I wanted you dead, you would have choked on cyanide in your baby bottle thirty-five years ago. I built you. Every company you acquired, every merger you signed, every instinct in your body was engineered by me."
"And Victoria?" Julian spat, his hands shaking with rage as he closed the distance between them, keeping the gun leveled between Charles's eyes. "Did you engineer her beating an old woman with a silver baseball bat? Did you engineer her kicking Eleanor down the stairs while Maria screamed for mercy?"
Charles let out a soft, mocking sigh, walking slowly toward the altar railing as if he were delivering a sermon to an empty congregation.
"Victoria was a blunt instrument, Julian. A common, greedy little street viper who thought she could squeeze twenty million dollars out of you by terrifying an old woman. But she served a purpose. I needed Eleanor to suffer."
"WHY?" Julian roared, the fury echoing off the stone pillars like thunder. "She gave her entire life to you! She raised your bastard daughter in secret! She protected your name for forty years!"
"Because Eleanor knew the one thing that could dismantle the Sovereign Trust," Charles said, his voice dropping into a razor-sharp whisper. "She knew that you aren't Katherine’s son either."
Julian froze, the world stopping on its axis. "What did you say?"
Charles turned, his dark eyes glittering with monstrous satisfaction. "Katherine is a vain, greedy old banker who thinks she bought an heir. But the DNA test she showed you? A fabrication I planted in Geneva ten years ago to keep the Swiss banks from freezing my accounts. You don't have a drop of St. Claire blood in you, Julian. You don't have a drop of von Brandt blood either."
From the shadows behind the choir loft, a metallic clank echoed through the nave. Maria emerged from the dark, her face bruised, her hands bound in steel chains, flanked by two private operators with suppressed weapons.
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"Julian," Maria cried out, her voice ragged and raw. "Don't listen to him! Look inside the altar bible! The real ledger is in the altar!"
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