Chapter 27 - The Ambush at the Crossing
"He’s alive," Olivia whispered, her hand clutching Ethan’s arm so tightly her fingernails pierced the fabric of his coat. Her eyes stared into the empty, satin-lined coffin in absolute horror. "Ethan... he faked his death. He didn't just abandon Evelyn. He staged an entire funeral to escape Margaret’s reach!"
Ethan stood motionless, staring down at the Irish passport. His mind was a tempest of rage, grief, and betrayal so violent it felt as if his skull would crack open.
"He let me grieve," Ethan said, his voice dropping into a deadly, guttural whisper that barely sounded human. "I stood in the rain for three hours beside this hole. I took over the wreckage of this company, took Margaret’s abuse, fought off his creditors... while he was drinking whiskey in Dublin."
"Ethan, we don't have time," Olivia urged, her voice trembling but sharp with urgency. "The note said twenty-four hours. Look at Eleanor’s tomb!"
Ethan forced his eyes away from his father's empty casket. Steeling his nerves, he turned back to Eleanor’s vault. With careful, measured movements, he used the chisel to break the original seal of her marble marker.
Within minutes, the faceplate came loose. Behind it, sitting atop the simple cedar casket, was a small, ornately carved rosewood music box inlaid with mother-of-pearl.
Olivia reached inside with shaking hands and lifted the box. With a soft click, she opened the brass clasp.
Inside, resting beneath the velvet lining where the mechanical cylinder should have been, lay a solid, rectangular block of deep-blue lapis lazuli, framed in intricate platinum filigree. Carved into its bottom face was the rampant griffin of the 1922 Vance Charter.
"We have it," Olivia breathed, tears finally spilling over her lashes. "The original seal."
"Put it in your coat," Ethan commanded, grabbing his flashlight and the pry bar. "We need to get back to Carter before Julian’s emergency board meeting convenes."
They hurried out of the mausoleum, Ethan pulling the heavy iron gates shut and securing them with a spare chain from his trunk. The fog had thickened, reducing visibility on the winding cemetery road to less than twenty yards.
They climbed into the Mercedes. Ethan turned the key; the powerful V8 engine roared to life, its headlights cutting twin beams through the milky mist.
He put the car into drive and accelerated down the narrow asphalt lane toward the cemetery exit.
As they rounded the sharp bend near the old stone chapel, Ethan’s instincts screamed.
Across the exit road, blocking both lanes, sat a heavy commercial flatbed tow truck, its yellow warning lights flashing silently in the fog.
Ethan slammed on the brakes. The Mercedes skidded on the wet gravel, stopping twenty feet from the steel bumper of the truck.
Before Ethan could throw the transmission into reverse, the headlights of two black Cadillac Escalades blazed to life in his rearview mirror, sealing the road behind them.
"Ethan!" Olivia screamed, clutching the music box to her chest.
Four men stepped out of the Escalades, dressed in tactical black raincoats, holding heavy steel batons and sidearms drawn.
From the passenger side of the tow truck stepped Victoria Sterling.
She wore a long, blood-red trench coat, her blonde hair pulled tight into a severe bun. In her gloved right hand, she held an automatic pistol, resting casually against her thigh.
She walked slowly toward the driver’s side of the Mercedes, a grotesque, victorious smirk plastered across her face.
"Did you really think we didn't have a tracker on the cemetery gates, brother dear?" Victoria called out, her voice cutting through the mist. "Julian knew you’d come for the music box the moment Evelyn showed her ugly face."
Ethan kept his foot firmly on the brake, his left hand dropping to the door console, surreptitiously locking every mechanism. "Victoria, step away from the car. You don't know what you're doing. Richard is alive."
Victoria paused five feet from the glass. For a fraction of a second, her smirk faltered, replaced by a flicker of confusion. But then she let out a shrill, hysterical laugh that echoed off the gravestones.
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"Richard? Daddy?" she sneered, tapping the muzzle of the pistol against Ethan’s tinted window. "Daddy is rotting in the ground, Ethan! And you're losing your mind just like mother said you would! Now unlock the door and hand over the lapis seal, or the men Julian hired will pull Olivia out through the windshield!"
***
