Chapter 35 - The Shattered Parlor
The smell of cordite and burning wallpaper hit me the moment we breached the concealed panel behind the grandfather clock in the grand parlor.
The once-stately room was decimated. Centuries-old oil paintings of Bennett ancestors were slashed to ribbons; velvet draperies hung in charred shreds from high arched windows. Rain blew sideways through the shattered panes, soaking the Persian rugs in sea foam and freezing water.
In the center of the room, surrounded by three heavily armed contractors with smoking rifles, stood Vance Sterling.
He was unrecognizable from the polished, aristocratic sociopath who had smiled across dinner tables at Boston charity galas. His bespoke overcoat was caked in mud, his silk tie ripped away, his hair plastered to his forehead with sweat and rain. In his trembling, blistered hands, he clutched a crowbar and an empty iron lockbox he had torn from the library chimney.
"It's not here!" Vance screamed, slamming the iron bar into an antique mahogany sideboard, shattering the wood into jagged splinters. "Where did the old bastard put the master bearer bonds?! Where is it?!"
"He didn't leave them for you, Vance," I said, stepping out from the shadow of the grandfather clock.
The three mercenaries snapped their rifles toward me instantly, but before their triggers could move, Marcus fired two precise, suppressed bursts through the wall partition. The two guards on the left dropped like sacks of wet sand, their weapons clattering against the marble hearth.
The third contractor dove behind an overturned oak table, returning blind fire that chewed through the plaster above my head.
I didn't flinch. The tactical drills from Munich took over my body before my brain could process fear. I dropped to one knee, leaned around the fluted marble column, and put two rounds into the exposed shoulder of the surviving gunman. He collapsed with a choked cry, dropping his carbine and clutching his shattered collarbone.
Vance stood frozen in the center of the devastation, his eyes wild, the crowbar slipping from his limp, rain-slicked fingers.
"Eleanor...?" he stammered, his voice cracking into a high, pathetic register. He looked at the smoking Sig Sauer in my hands, then at the blood pooling on the rug, and finally into my eyes. The illusion he had maintained for four years—the fantasy that I was a docile porcelain doll he could manipulate and discard—cracked completely.
"You look wet, Vance," I said, walking slowly toward him, my boots crunching over shards of hundred-year-old crystal. "Did Boston not agree with you?"
"You... you set me up," he whispered, backing away until his spine hit the cold stone mantelpiece. "The Chestnut Street vault... you knew the feds were waiting! You fed me the coordinates through Lydia!"
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"Lydia was working for my father before you were even born," I replied, stopping six feet away, keeping the weapon leveled dead at the bridge of his nose. "Every move you made, every wire transfer you altered, every contract you forged was logged on a sovereign server in Geneva. You didn't marry an heiress, Vance. You married an audit."
***
