Chapter 21 - The Knife’s Edge
The silver blade caught the violent blue glare of lightning, throwing a jagged line of light across Jonathan’s chest. The air in Lily’s bedroom tasted of ozone, rain, and the cold metal tang of panic.
"Jonathan," Martha breathed, her voice cracking as she took a single, unsteady step into the room. Her knuckles were bone-white against the black handle of the carving knife. Her apron was soaked at the hem, flecked with mud from the kitchen terrace. "I heard... I heard glass breaking from downstairs. And the dogs—the dogs didn't bark. Jonathan, they gave them something. The mastiffs aren't moving."
Jonathan’s hand remained frozen around the telephone receiver, the dial tone droning in his ear like a flatlining heartbeat. The voice on the phone had given him ten minutes. Ten minutes to butcher the woman who had wiped Lily’s tears, who had held the girl through her night terrors, who had stood as the sole unwavering pillar of loyalty when Victoria’s venom had poisoned their home.
"Put the knife down, Martha," Jonathan said, his voice terrifyingly calm, carved out of pure adrenaline.
Martha looked at the knife in her hand as if noticing it for the first time. Her chin trembled, and a sob hitched in her throat. "I took it from the butcher block when the back lights died. I thought whoever was out there had come through the pantry. Where is Lily? Jonathan, where is the baby?"
Her gaze swept past his shoulder, landing on the empty, disheveled bed. The tiny indentation on the pillow. The pink ribbon knotted into a miniature noose around the plush rabbit. The shards of the crystal goblet glittering like teeth across the fairy-tale book.
The knife slipped from Martha’s fingers, clattering loudly against the hardwood floor. She fell to her knees, burying her face in her hands, her shoulders heaving with ragged, breathless sobs. "No... dear God, no. Not again. Not Lily."
Jonathan stepped over the fallen blade and knelt beside her. The caller wanted Martha dead. They wanted her blood smeared across the marble foyer, beamed through the estate’s closed-circuit cameras to prove Jonathan’s total subjugation. Which meant two things: whoever had taken his daughter was watching the estate feeds right now through a hijacked IP, and they had an intimate, terrifying knowledge of who held the Vance family together.
"Martha, look at me," Jonathan commanded, gripping her trembling shoulders. "Listen to me very carefully. We don't have time to break down. Lily is alive. They took her in a black SUV less than two minutes ago."
Martha looked up, her tear-stained eyes wide with horror. "Who took her?"
"They called this line. They gave me ten minutes to kill you and stream your body on the foyer camera, or Lily dies."
Martha’s breath stopped. The color drained completely from her skin, leaving her as pale as chalk. Yet, after three agonizing seconds of absolute paralysis, something inside the elderly woman hardened. A fierce, ancient maternal fury flickered behind her wet eyes.
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"Then do it," Martha whispered hoarsely. "Jonathan, if it saves that child, you do it."
"Are you insane?" Jonathan snapped, pulling her to her feet. "I am not killing you. But within the next seven minutes, whoever is watching that camera has to believe, without a shadow of a doubt, that you are dead."
