Chapter 90 - The Awakening of Erebus
Ethan stood amidst the burning wreckage of his father’s last sanctuary, his rifle trained directly on the man who wore his face.
"Who are you?" Ethan demanded, his voice ringing with cold thunder through the cavernous, burning warehouse.
"I am Thomas Sterling," the man replied, descending the iron staircase with slow, measured steps, not flinching at the five laser sights trained on his chest. "The firstborn. The heir Charles erased twenty-eight years ago when my mother refused to sign his dynastic prenuptial agreement."
Thomas stepped off the final rung of the staircase, stopping twenty paces from Ethan. He looked down at Charles's dead body with an expression of cold disgust, then nudged the old man's foot with the polished tip of his boot.
"He called me Erebus," Thomas continued, a bitter, twisted smile playing on his lips. "The darkness between worlds. While you grew up in private academies on the Upper East Side, playing polo and learning corporate law, I was raised in a black-site sanitarium in the Swiss Alps, fed on the scraps of his shadow trusts, trained to be his personal assassin and financial executioner."
"You orchestrated the attack on Olivia," Ethan said, his finger resting on the hair-trigger of his Benelli. "You gave Victoria the poison."
"Victoria was an idiot who thought she was playing chess," Thomas said dismissively. "I simply whispered in her ear, handed her the vial, and watched her walk straight into a federal penitentiary. She served her purpose. She brought you out into the open. She made you desperate."
Thomas reached into his overcoat, and Marcus's team clicked their safeties off.
"Easy, gentlemen," Thomas chuckled softly, pulling out a sleek, glowing biometric drive. "I already have what I came for. The liquidation script wasn't meant to destroy the Sterling assets. It was meant to transfer them. As we speak, seventy percent of the family’s global holdings have been routed into my private holding company in Singapore."
"You think you can walk out of here with that?" Ethan snarled.
"I know I can," Thomas replied smoothly. "Because while you were standing here watching our dear father die, my secondary team arrived at St. Jude's Private Pavilion."
Ethan’s heart stopped. The blood drained from his face in a single, sickening rush.
"Dr. Thorne is a very talented surgeon," Thomas murmured, checking a gold stopwatch. "A pity his loyalty can be bought for twenty million dollars. The blast doors to the recovery ward unlocked five minutes ago, Ethan."
Thomas tapped the screen of his tactical phone and turned it toward Ethan.
The live security feed from St. Jude's showed the private hospital room.
The bed where Olivia had been resting was completely empty. The neonatal isolette where baby Grace had slept was overturned, the warm blankets scattered across the floor.
Standing in the center of the empty hospital room, looking directly into the camera, was Dr. Alan Thorne, holding a secure satellite phone to his ear.
"You have four hours, Ethan," Thomas whispered, his eyes gleaming with mad, predatory triumph as sirens began to wail in the distance through the burning Queens night. "Bring the remaining thirty percent of the Zurich bearer bonds to Blackwood Ridge Manor. If you call the authorities, if Marcus takes a single step onto that property... your wife and your daughter will take their final breath before sunrise."
May you like
Thomas stepped backward into the heavy curtain of black smoke, tossing a smoke grenade that detonated with a blinding flash of white phosphorus.
"Marcus!" Ethan roared through the blinding whiteout, his world collapsing into pure, unadulterated madness. "To the cars! NOW!"
