Chapter 17 - THE BROTHER IN THE SHADOWS
The air inside the interrogation room seemed to freeze.
Claire stared at Victoria, her breath hitching in her throat. "Arthur Vance? Arthur Vance died in a plane crash twelve years ago in the Alps."
"Arthur faked his death the day the Securities and Exchange Commission issued forty-two sealed indictments against Vance Maritime!" Victoria hissed, spitting the words through clenched teeth. "He took the name Vincent Blackwood. He created the syndicate to buy Daniel’s debt from the European lenders. Daniel didn't die at sea by accident. Arthur had his divers cut the hydraulic steering lines during the gale!"
Ethan felt the room tilting. Every certainty he had clung to over the past fourteen months was twisting into a nightmare of inverted truths.
"You attacked me," Ethan said, his voice trembling with a mixture of rage and confusion. "I pulled Claire out of the pool, and you lunged at me. You tried to gouge my eyes out! I had to break your ribs to stop you!"
"I attacked you because Arthur's men were watching from the tree line!" Victoria snarled, tears of genuine, boiling fury suddenly shining in her sunken eyes. "If I had let you pull her out and comfort her, they would have opened fire on the terrace and slaughtered all three of you! I had to make it look like a domestic bloodbath! I had to force you to brutalize me so the local police would arrive with sirens screaming before Arthur's clean-up crew could breach the gate!"
She leaned across the table, her chains straining against the steel anchor bolts. "I took that impact through the glass, Ethan! I let my collarbone shatter! I spent fourteen months eating sedatives and playing the madwoman in this hellhole so Arthur would think I was neutralized! Because as long as he thought I was insane and Claire was an ignorant victim, he would wait until June’s fourteenth month to claim the default!"
Claire shook her head, backed away from the table, her hands pressed against her temples. "No... no, this is another manipulation. You're trying to save yourself. You're trying to get Ethan to break you out!"
"I don't want to be broken out!" Victoria screamed, the sound echoing through the observation glass. "I am safe here behind six inches of ballistic concrete! But you... you brought June out into the open! Where is she, Ethan? Where did you leave the baby?!"
Ethan’s heart dropped into an abyss. "She’s in the security office. With Evelyn Cross."
Victoria’s face went dead white. All the rage, all the theatrical malice, vanished in an instant, replaced by a pure, unadulterated terror that Ethan had never seen in his mother's eyes.
"Evelyn Cross?" Victoria whispered, her jaw trembling violently. "Evelyn Cross didn't draft Daniel's trust, Ethan."
Ethan’s blood ran completely ice-cold. "What?"
"Evelyn Cross was Arthur Vance’s executive mistress for twenty years," Victoria gasped, lunging forward with such violence that the iron bolts in the table groaned under the strain. "She’s the one who gave the diver the schematics to Daniel’s yacht! She didn't bring you here to save you! She brought you here to clear June's biometrics so Arthur could claim the vault without having to keep the baby alive!"
Before Ethan could move, the fire alarm throughout St. Jude Psychiatric Institute began to wail—a deafening, pulsing siren accompanied by strobe lights that flashed crimson against the concrete corridor.
The heavy steel door of Ward C slammed shut with a hydraulic hiss, the electronic mag-locks engaging with a thunderous clank.
The power cut out.
The emergency generators groaned, casting the room into a deep, blood-red gloom.
Over the facility’s public address system, Evelyn Cross’s voice drifted through the speakers, calm, elegant, and entirely devoid of remorse:
May you like
"Thank you for the biometrics, Ethan. The Swiss bank has confirmed the transfer authorization. Victoria... enjoy the rest of your stay. As for June... Arthur has always wanted a granddaughter."
***
