Chapter 19 - The Attorney General’s Hand
The door didn't swing open fast; it drifted inward with smooth, terrifying deliberation.
Standing in the doorway was not a masked mercenary, but a tall, elegant woman in her late forties, wearing a tailored charcoal-wool coat and silver hair pulled back in a severe, immaculate chignon. Behind her stood two state troopers in full uniform, their hands resting loosely over the holsters of their service weapons.
Victoria Hayes looked into the room.
Her eyes—identical to Sophie’s, the same piercing shade of slate-blue—drifted over Ryan, dismissive, before fixing squarely on the girl sitting at the metal table.
“You have your father’s posture,” Victoria said, her voice smooth, resonant, the practiced tone of a politician accustomed to commanding press rooms. “Awkward. Rigid. Always looking like you’re waiting to be hit.”
Sophie stood up slowly, her chin lifting. She didn't cower. She stood with the fierce, quiet spine she had inherited not from Victoria, but from the man who had caught her on the balcony and the man who had raised her in the orchard.
“You burned my house,” Sophie said simply.
“I neutralized a loose end that Margaret Vance kept in her cage for twenty years,” Victoria replied, stepping into the cubicle. The state troopers remained outside, blocking the corridor, their faces stone. “Margaret was a blackmailer. David was a coward who couldn't stomach the realities of power. And you, Sophie, are a clerical error that has overstayed its welcome by two decades.”
Ryan stepped between Victoria and Sophie, his shoulder blocking Victoria’s line of sight. “You step one foot closer to her, and the digital copies on that drive go directly to every media bureau from New York to Washington.”
Victoria smiled—a cold, thin sliver of amusement. “Do you think the press cares about the tearful memoirs of a dead blackmailer and an orphan, Ryan? The local police are currently surrounding this block. They received a tip that the two suspects who murdered an operative and burned the Vance estate last night were attempting to rob this branch.”
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She reached into her coat, not for a gun, but for an official evidence bag.
“Put the box on the table, Ryan. Hand it to me, and you might survive the ride to the precinct. Refuse, and the troopers will declare this an armed hostage situation.”
