Chapter 15 - The Fall of the Vance Matriarch
The firefight was over in ninety seconds, leaving the subterranean crypt choking with cordite smoke and the stench of sulfur. Daniel, bleeding heavily from a grazing bullet wound along his left shoulder, dragged Emily through a subterranean drainage escape route once used during Prohibition, emerging four blocks away into the sodden alleys of Chinatown.
By 3:00 AM, they had reached the Vance ancestral estate on the cliffs of Oyster Bay—a sprawling, Gothic fortress of limestone and iron that had stood since the Gilded Age.
"Grandmother!" Emily called out, kicking through the shattered French doors of the grand conservatory.
Glass littered the imported Persian rugs. The air smelled foul—a sweet, cloying scent of burnt almond and crushed hydrangeas.
In the center of the vast library, seated upon a high-backed velvet throne beneath the towering portrait of Cassandra Vance, sat Eleanor Vance.
Her head was tilted back at an unnatural angle. Her skin had turned the color of parchment, her royal silver hair tangled across her face. On her lap rested a vintage crystal tumbler, shattered into shards, surrounded by an oily, dark liquid that had eaten right through the varnish of the armrest.
"Grandmother!" Emily fell to her knees before the old woman, grabbing her cold, bony hands. There was a faint, shallow flutter at Eleanor’s carotid artery. She was breathing, but barely—suspended in a chemically induced comatose state.
Pinned to Eleanor’s bodice with an antique diamond brooch was a gold-embossed document: an irrevocable Power of Attorney, transferring Eleanor’s thirty-five percent controlling interest in Sterling-Vance Global to an offshore entity named *The Leviathan Group*.
And signed across the bottom in fresh, elegant script was a name that made Emily’s blood turn to ice:
*Cassandra Vance Sterling.*
Emily gripped the paper so tightly the corners tore. "Daniel... look at this signature. This isn't Victoria Drake."
Daniel wiped blood from his cheek with the back of his tactical glove, leaning over Eleanor’s limp form to inspect the parchment. His eyes narrowed in pure horror. "That’s Cassandra’s personal seal. The wax is stamped with her private signet ring—the one she was allegedly buried with in the Mediterranean twenty years ago."
Eleanor’s lips moved slightly, a faint, agonizing murmur escaping her cracked lips.
May you like
Emily leaned in close, her ear brushing the old woman's cold lips. "Grandmother... tell me. I’m here."
"Not... dead..." Eleanor whispered, a tear of pure anguish leaking from the corner of her closed eye. "She... never... loved... you. She built... the trap."
