After spending $110,000 supporting my family, I returned from a 21-day Navy mission to find my father giving my $4 million Lake Tahoe villa to my sister—but one message from my attorney was about to turn their champagne celebration into a nightmare. / Chapter 120 / 181

Chapter 120 - The Siblings' Reckoning

The bridge hatch behind us suddenly hissed open.

I didn't lower my weapon from Sterling, but Reyes shifted his muzzle instantly toward the doorway.

Clara stumbled into the bridge, soaked, shivering, her hair plastered to her skull, clutching an automatic pistol she had taken from the dead contractor in the maintenance bay. Behind her, Arthur collapsed against the bulkhead, his chest heaving with shallow, rattling gasps.

"Clara..." Arthur wheezed. "Put... put the gun down..."

Clara wasn't looking at our father. She was looking at Sterling, and then at me. Her eyes were wide, wild, completely unhinged by terror and avarice.

"Is it true?" she screamed at Sterling, her voice breaking into hysterical sobs. "You said the money would be in the Cayman account the second the mission was complete! Where is it? Where is my fifty million?!"

Sterling didn't even look at her; his eyes remained fixed on mine. "Look at her, Marcus. Look at the sister you bled for. Look at what your hundred and ten thousand dollars bought."

"Shut up! Shut up!" Clara shrieked, swinging the pistol toward Sterling, then violently back toward me. "Marcus, make him transfer the money! Tell him! You have the gun—make him give me the codes! If I don't get the money, what was all of this for?! What did I ruin my life for?!"

"You ruined your life because you're empty inside, Clara," I said, my voice cutting through her hysteria like an ice pick. "You took everything I had to give, and when there was nothing left to give, you tried to steal my name and murder millions of innocent people."

"I deserve that house!" she wept, tears cutting clean lines through the grime on her cheeks. "You were never there! You were always off playing hero for Uncle Sam while I had to take care of Dad! I deserved something for my sacrifice!"

"Your sacrifice?" I stepped sideways, placing myself between her shaking gun and the master console. "You lived rent-free in my guest house for two years. You drove a car registered in my name. And the first chance you got, you brought a terrorist strike team into my living room."

"Drop the weapon, Clara," Reyes barked from the flank, his rifle leveled at her center mass. "I won't tell you twice."

"No!" she screamed, raising the pistol with both hands, aiming straight at my chest. "If I'm going down, I'm taking—"

*BANG.*

The shot didn't come from my rifle. It didn't come from Reyes.

It came from the deck behind her.

Arthur Vance was sitting on the floor, his trembling hands gripping a secondary sidearm he had pried from a dead guard's holster. A thin wisp of gray smoke curled from the muzzle.

Clara gasped. Her eyes opened wide in shock as she looked down at the crimson blossom spreading across her white blouse, directly over her shoulder. The pistol slipped from her paralyzed fingers, clattering loudly against the steel deck plates.

"Dad...?" she whispered, her knees buckling. She collapsed onto her side, clutching her shoulder, weeping in agony.

Arthur let the gun fall from his hands, tears streaming down his weathered, ruined face. "I'm sorry, Marcus... God forgive me... I'm so sorry..."