My 8-year-old daughter interrupted my sister’s $luxury wedding with a silver flash drive, and when the groom demanded to see what was on it, my sister screamed, “TURN THAT MIC OFF!”—but the voice that filled the ballroom changed everything. / Chapter 95 / 100

Chapter 95 - The Price of Blood

"Don't take another step, Julian," Evelyn snapped, leveling her rifle at his chest in an instant.

"Go ahead and shoot, darling," Julian sneered, holding up the remote in his hand. His thumb was depressed over an illuminated green button. "This is a dead-man's switch tied to six blocks of military-grade C4 planted along the municipal gas main above this tunnel. You pull that trigger, and this entire street collapses into a three-hundred-foot sinkhole. We all burn together."

Evelyn didn't lower the gun, but her finger stayed off the trigger. Her knuckles turned white against the black receiver.

Julian stepped forward slowly, his polished leather shoes splashing through the dirty water. He stopped ten paces away, his eyes locking onto Lily, who shrank back against my legs.

"Bring the girl to the terminal, Claire," Julian said quietly, his tone terrifyingly calm. "Scan her irises. Authorize the transfer of the primary offshore accounts to the Zurich holding company. The moment the funds clear, I walk away. I have no interest in your life, nor do I care about Evelyn's petty vendettas. I only want what Arthur promised me."

"Arthur promised you nothing, Julian," I said, stepping between him and Lily, staring down the barrel of his mercenaries' rifles. "You were nothing but an ambitious parasite who thought marrying into a corrupt dynasty would give you the keys to the kingdom. My daughter is not touching that scanner."

Julian sighed deeply, tilting his head back toward the ceiling of the tunnel. "Claire, Claire, Claire. You always were the stubborn one. The moral compass of a family that traded in human lives. But let me ask you something: did you ever wonder why your father chose Lily?"

A cold knot twisted in my stomach. "What are you talking about?"

"Arthur didn't pick Lily because she was his first granddaughter," Julian smiled, a sickening, razor-sharp grin that revealed all his teeth. "He picked her because she was the only legitimate blood descendant he had left."

I frowned, confusion cutting through my fear. "What do you mean? Evelyn and I—"

"You and Evelyn are not Arthur Vance's biological daughters," Julian interrupted, his voice echoing off the damp concrete walls like a death sentence. "Arthur was sterile from a childhood fever. Your mother had an affair with Arthur's younger brother, Richard—the brother who died in a mysterious boating accident thirty years ago. Arthur raised you two out of spite, to keep Richard's secret buried. But Lily? Lily’s father was different. Lily’s father was the direct clone line Arthur funded in the late nineties to preserve his genetic sequence."

The world seemed to spin beneath my feet. I stared at him, the absurdity and horror of his words crashing over me like a tidal wave. "You're insane. That's impossible."