Chapter 14 - The Forty-Eight-Hour Countdown
"Clarissa," I growled, stepping directly in front of the camera, deliberately blocking the frame so she couldn't catch a glimpse of Khloe or Victoria. "If you take one step onto this property, I will put a hollow-point bullet through your skull before your foot hits the ground."
Clarissa laughed—a musical, utterly devoid-of-warmth sound that echoed through the kitchen speakers.
"Always so predictably violent, just like Arthur," she mused, adjusting an antique platinum Cartier watch on her slender wrist. "Let’s dispense with the melodrama, Julian. We both know the local sheriff is on my payroll, the private security firm guarding your access road answered to my holding company as of 4:00 AM, and the federal marshals investigating Isabella’s 'untimely suicide' have already closed the file as an inmate dispute."
"Isabella was serving thirty years!" Khloe shouted, stepping into the edge of the frame, her maternal rage overcoming her fear. "You executed her in cold blood!"
Clarissa’s ice-blue eyes shifted toward Khloe, studying her with clinical detachment, like an entomologist admiring an insect pinned to a corkboard.
"Isabella was an embarrassment to our family name," Clarissa said smoothly. "She attacked you with her shoe like a common, hysterical street brawler because she lacked the intellectual capacity to read a simple balance sheet. Arthur gave her everything, and she squandered it on cocaine and real estate in Monaco. Her death was simply housecleaning. But you, Khloe... you possess something infinitely more valuable than Isabella ever dreamed of."
"You touch my daughter," Khloe snarled, "and I swear to God I will tear your throat out with my bare hands."
"I have no interest in harming Victoria," Clarissa replied, her tone insultingly reasonable. "In fact, I want to preserve her. Under the Swiss trust agreement, if you voluntarily surrender Victoria to the Zurich Medical Institute for a routine, bi-monthly bone marrow harvesting protocol, I will grant you and Khloe three hundred million dollars, non-taxable, paid through our Luxembourg accounts. You can retire to Fiji. You can have three more children. You will never see me again."
"And if we refuse?" I spat.
Clarissa tilted her head, her smile vanishing, replaced by a terrifying, dead void.
"If you refuse, the forty-eight-hour probate window will close. At 8:00 AM on Thursday, the entire financial structure of the Victoria Vance Foundation will be seized under international receivership. Dr. Chen’s medical license will be permanently revoked under fabricated federal narcotics charges. And my tactical extraction team will enter your farmhouse."
She leaned forward, her face filling the high-definition display.
"You managed to defeat Isabella because she was stupid, Julian. She relied on shock and physical violence. But I don't need to break your wife’s ribs to destroy you. I own the law, I own the medicine, and by Thursday morning, I will own your daughter. You have forty-seven hours and twelve minutes. Choose wisely."
The screen went black.
The silence that settled over the farmhouse was absolute, punctuated only by the soft, rhythmic gurgling of Victoria in Khloe's arms.
Khloe looked at me, her eyes dilated with sheer panic. "Julian... what are we going to do?"
I turned toward the gun safe built into the pantry wall, punching in the eight-digit biometric code with cold, methodical detachment.
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"We aren't waiting for Thursday," I said, opening the reinforced steel door to reveal four tactical carbines, Kevlar vests, and thousands of rounds of ammunition. "We’re going to war."
***
