Chapter 50 - The Dead Man’s Heirloom
The gavel struck the sounding block with a crash that echoed like a cannon shot through the Palais de Justice.
"By the authority of the International Arbitration Tribunal," the Chief Magistrate proclaimed, his face dark with fury, "Madame Beatrice De Winter is remanded into federal custody without bail, charged with high treason, attempted murder of a minor, and conspiracy to subvert sovereign banking laws. The Vance estate is restored in its entirety to the sole custody of Eleanor Vance as legal guardian of Leo Vance."
French tactical police officers, armed with submachine guns and clad in black body armor, surged through the shattered doors, surrounding Beatrice De Winter.
The old matriarch didn't struggle as the steel handcuffs clicked around her thin wrists. She stood straight, her silver hair catching the gray light filtering through the rain-streaked stained glass. As they dragged her past Eleanor, she stopped.
A sickening, bloody smile spread across Beatrice’s wrinkled lips.
"You think you’ve won, Eleanor?" Beatrice whispered, her voice laced with a venom so pure it made the air turn cold. "You think you’re walking out of here to raise your little prince on twelve billion dollars of blood money?"
"The war is over, Beatrice," Eleanor said, holding Leo firmly against her hip. "You lost."
"Arthur was the stupid one," Beatrice laughed softly, a low, rattling chuckle from the back of her throat. "He thought he was the architect. He thought he shot his way into the Vance vault. Did you ever wonder, Eleanor... why Arthur’s DNA matched the sovereign vault in Zurich, but never matched your son?"
Eleanor froze. The world around her seemed to lose all sound.
"What did you say?" Eleanor whispered.
"The blood test in the safe wasn't a forgery, my dear," Beatrice sneered, her eyes gleaming with triumphant madness as the police hauled her backward toward the corridor. "Arthur was sterile from the age of twenty! The bioweapon he developed in the North Sea... he didn't develop it to kill Leo! He developed it because Leo wasn't his!"
Beatrice’s laughter echoed down the marble hallway as the heavy steel doors slammed shut behind her.
Eleanor stood frozen in the center of the Grand Chamber. Her breath caught in her throat. Her heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird.
Slowly, her hands trembling for the first time in months, she looked down at the boy standing beside her. Leo looked up at her with his clear, brilliant green eyes—eyes that she had looked into every day of his life.
In her coat pocket, the private satellite phone Julian had given her began to vibrate.
Eleanor pulled the phone out with numb fingers and pressed it to her ear. She expected Julian’s voice, checking in from the extraction vehicle waiting outside on the Quai des Orfèvres.
Instead, a deep, resonant voice—a voice she had not heard in seven years, a voice belonging to a man who had allegedly died in an alpine plane crash long before she ever met Arthur Vance—spoke through the receiver with terrifying intimacy:
*"Hello, Eleanor. You took exceptional care of our son. Now, bring him home to Geneva... before I have to come take him back myself."*
May you like
The line went dead.
Down on the street below, through the shattered windows of the high chamber, the sleek black limousine waiting at the curb suddenly engaged its engine, its tinted rear window rolling down slowly in the pouring rain.
