Chapter 8 - The Mask Completely Drops
The dispatcher’s voice continued to emit static from Marcus’s left hand, but the room had fallen into absolute zero.
Evelyn looked up from the floor, hearing her own recorded voice betray her most guarded, lethal secret.
Her blood ran completely ice-cold, her mouth hanging open in paralyzed terror.
Margaret slumped back against the mahogany shelf, her wrinkled face turning the color of wet chalk.
The conspiracy to murder the billionaire Vance had been laid bare in four-thousand-pixel clarity.
Marcus slowly closed his eyes for a single second, taking a long, deep, terrifying breath.
When he opened them, the gray in his irises looked like the surface of a frozen ocean.
"Friday?" Marcus whispered, his voice dangerously soft, yet terrifying enough to cause Clara to shudder.
"You planned to murder me on the mountain pass on Friday?"
Evelyn shook her head frantically, crawling backward until her spine hit the lower drawers of the console.
"No, no, Marcus, it was a joke, it was dark humor, we were frustrated, we didn't mean it!" she stammered wildly.
"A joke with forged digital signatures on a twenty-five million dollar life insurance policy?" Julian spat, his fists trembling.
"I check the household accounting logs, Evelyn, I saw the legal filings from the offshore account three days ago!"
Julian had connected the dots that had previously seemed like mere corporate clutter.
The abuse of Clara had not just been sadistic pleasure; it had been an attempt to drive the children away before the execution.
They wanted Clara to run away, and Julian to be disowned, leaving Evelyn as the sole surviving heir.
Marcus stared down at the woman he had foolishly brought into his home three years ago after his first wife's passing.
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The guilt that surged through his chest was heavy enough to bring an ordinary man to his knees.
He had invited a den of vipers into the sanctuary of his broken children.
