Chapter 20 - The Iron Spindle
Julian looked at me, his eyes full of anguish and unspoken apologies. Slowly, deliberately, he walked to the back of the sedan. The trunk popped open with a soft mechanical hiss. He laid the midnight-black Mourning Dress inside, the silver embroidery catching the crimson glow of the car's taillights.
"Good boy," Vivienne murmured. "Now step back."
"What happens to Clara?" Julian demanded, standing between them and me. "You have the dresses. You have the code. Let us go."
"Clara comes with us," Thomas said, lowering his gun slightly. "She is the only one who knows the final hand-stitching sequence. The molecular alignment of the fibers must be finished by hand. Machine tension breaks the protein chains."
"I will die before I thread another needle for you," I spat, staring directly into my mother’s cold eyes.
"No, you won't," Vivienne said with a chilling smile. "Because if you don't come with us, Julian dies right here on this asphalt. And his entire family—his mother, his sisters, his nieces in Provence—will find their homes visited by the same 'unfortunate industrial fires' that claimed the Laurent estate tonight."
"Don't do it, Clara," Julian said, his voice cracking with emotion. "Let them shoot. Don't let them take you."
"I love you, Julian," I whispered.
I reached behind my back, my fingers slipping into the hidden seam of the ivory gown’s inner corset. There, nestled between the whalebone stays, was the small, razor-sharp steel shears I had kept tucked away since the morning fitting—the shears I had used to cut Eleanor out of my dressing room, the ones I had carried down the aisle as a secret talisman of my craft.
"I will come with you," I said aloud, stepping past Julian toward the sedan. "On one condition."
"You are in no position to negotiate, Clara," Thomas said, stepping aside to let me pass.
"One condition," I repeated, stopping right in front of Vivienne. "Tell me who bought the synthetic patent. Who paid you to fake your death in 1996?"
Vivienne looked at Thomas, a small, triumphant laugh escaping her lips. "Does it matter? A consortium in Zurich. A private sovereign fund in the East. To them, it’s just technology. To us, it’s an empire."
"It matters," I said, "because of this."
With a speed born of fifteen years of cutting patterns at lightning pace, I whipped the steel shears from my corset and jammed the sharp twin points directly into the hydraulic line of the sedan’s open trunk lid.
A hiss of pressurized fluid sprayed across the engine bay. The heavy steel trunk lid slammed down instantly with the force of a guillotine, locking shut with a violent mechanical thud.
At the same instant, I dropped to the ground and drove the blades into the sedan’s rear tire, slicing through the rubber with a deafening *pop*.
"Clara, you little bitch!" Vivienne screamed, drawing a small derringer from her coat.
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"JULIAN, RUN!" I yelled, scrambling toward the stone balustrade at the edge of the estate road, which overlooked the rushing waters of the Saône River fifty feet below.
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