Chapter 57 - The Sister's Gambit
Victoria pulled the device from her pocket with an irritated flick of her wrist. The screen was flashing amber—an emergency alert from the private Zurich banking portal.
*CRITICAL BREACH: ALL SOVEREIGN ACCOUNTS FROZEN BY US FEDERAL COURT DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS. CHARGE: BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS CONSPIRACY, ATTEMPTED MURDER, HIGH TREASON.*
Victoria’s breath hitched. She looked up, her aristocratic face suddenly pale beneath her makeup. "What is this?"
"That," Ryan said, stepping forward, "is the Whitehall archive. Eve didn't go to the water tunnels, Victoria. She went to the manor’s communications relay in the west tower. The moment your diplomatic convoy breached the gates, she routed the raw footage of your nineteen-ninety-four breeding program directly to the Attorney General’s desk."
Through the shattered glass of the entrance, the distant wail of sirens began to bleed through the morning fog—not state troopers, but the heavy, multi-toned sirens of Federal Bureau of Investigation tactical response teams.
"You fool!" Victoria shrieked, her voice losing every shred of its cultivated composure. "If you burn the foundation, you burn everything! The Vance name will be worthless! You’ll be penniless!"
"I don't care about the money, Victoria," Ryan snarled. "I never did. I only cared about protecting my family from the monsters who built it."
"Kill them," Victoria commanded, spinning toward her lead contractor. "Kill them both now!"
The mercenary raised his submachine gun, his finger tightening on the trigger.
A single, suppressed gunshot cracked from the upper mezzanine.
The contractor’s weapon flew from his hands as a high-caliber round shattered his forearm. He screamed, collapsing onto the marble as two more shots echoed with surgical rhythm—taking out the remaining guards’ knee joints with non-lethal, incapacitating precision.
Eve stood on the second-floor landing, leaning heavily against the mahogany banister. She held Thorne’s spare semi-automatic rifle, her hands trembling from the neuro-toxin burning through her system, but her aim remained unwavering. Blood was dripping steadily from her left sleeve, pooling onto the floorboards, yet she stood upright like an avenging ghost engineered from the sins of the house.
"The Fourth Protocol," Eve whispered loud enough for Victoria to hear, "was designed to eliminate internal threats to the bloodline. Charles was very specific about that clause, Mother."
Victoria stumbled backward, her cane clattering against the marble floor. She looked at Eve—at the living, breathing manifestation of her late husband’s deepest betrayal—and for the first time in her life, Victoria Vance looked truly terrified.
"You... you’re a machine," Victoria stammered, backing toward the front doors. "You’re an unnatural freak!"
"And you," Claire said, stepping directly into Victoria’s path, blocking the exit, "are under arrest."
Victoria lunged forward, her manicured claws aiming for Claire’s eyes in a final, desperate spasm of aristocratic rage.
Claire didn't retreat. She didn't cower as she had on the day of the gender reveal. She stepped into the strike, parried Victoria’s wrist with a sharp, defensive deflection Ryan had drilled into her memory, and drove her open palm squarely into Victoria’s breastbone.
The force of the strike, combined with Victoria’s heels, sent the older woman crashing violently onto the very spot where Claire’s blood had once stained the floor.
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Outside, the heavy rumble of armored FBI BearCats tore through the morning fog, their blue and red lights painting the limestone walls of Vance Manor in an unrelenting cadence of reckoning.
***
