Chapter 15 - The Secret Heir
The torrential rain that battered Manhattan mirrored the storm raging inside Emily’s chest.
Sirens wailed across the city, their flashing blue and red strobes painting the rain-slicked asphalt in lurid colors. Paramedics were treating Victoria on a gurney inside the subterranean garage, but Victoria ripped the IV line from her arm, ignoring the blood soaking through her bandages.
"I’m going with you," Victoria growled, her face pale but her eyes burning with an unholy fire. "Don't you dare tell me to stay behind, Emily. He took my niece. He took Clara."
Emily didn't argue. The trauma of the past year had burned away any remaining fragility between the sisters. They were wolves now, forged in fire and tragedy.
Marcus slammed the heavy doors of the armored suburban shut, racking a fresh magazine into his assault rifle. "Julian’s tactical team bypassed the manor’s perimeter through the private sewer mains Arthur Vance installed in the 1990s. They neutralized the panic room guard with fentanyl gas. Clara was extracted via an unmarked Sikorsky helicopter heading toward the Sterling family estate in the Hudson Valley."
"Blackwood Castle," Emily whispered, the name tasting like ash and bile in her mouth.
Blackwood Castle was the sprawling, Gothic stone fortress perched atop the cliffs overlooking the Hudson River—the very place where Emily had donned her white bridal gown, where she had looked into Julian’s handsome, lying eyes, and where she had plummeted four stories onto shattered stone.
"He’s taking her back to where it all began," Victoria said, clenching her wounded arm. "Why? If he has the child and the money, why return to the crime scene?"
Emily pulled her father’s classified ledger from her coat. Her hands were covered in dried blood—partly Elena's, partly her sister’s. She flipped to the final page, which detailed an ancient trust protocol Arthur Vance had signed thirty years ago.
"Look at the inheritance clause," Emily said, her voice shaking with absolute horror. "Under the Vance-Sterling trust agreement, if the primary heirs are deceased or legally incapacitated, the entire conglomerate—all assets, offshore holdings, and intellectual property—defaults to the first surviving direct male or female descendant of the combined bloodlines."
Marcus glanced in the rearview mirror, his eyes narrowing. "Clara."
"Julian doesn't just want Clara as a hostage," Emily revealed, tears of rage spilling down her cheeks. "In the eyes of the European courts, Julian is still listed as the legal father on her initial foreign birth registry before we filed the annulment. If Victoria and I die before midnight tonight—before the annulment’s legal deadline is finalized in Delaware Chancery Court—Julian becomes the sole legal guardian of Clara Vance-Sterling. He gains unfettered control of twelve billion dollars."
"He didn't escape prison to run," Victoria snarled, cocking a fresh pistol with her uninjured hand. "He escaped to finish the execution."
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The armored SUV accelerated into the torrential darkness, tearing through the storm toward the Hudson Valley, racing against the clock of a midnight deadline that was only ninety minutes away.
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