Chapter 56 - Mother’s Reckoning
I stepped across the body of the fallen guard and wrenched the French doors open, allowing the freezing night wind and rain to sweep into the room, dispersing the lethal cloud of halon gas.
Air rushed back into the study. My father collapsed against the hallway wainscoting, greedily sucking air into his lungs, his face covered in tears and snot. My mother slumped into an armchair, coughing violently, her black coat soaked with rain from the open window.
Arthur stood in the center of the ruined study, leaning on his cane, the tip dripping crimson onto the Persian rug. He looked like an ancient king standing among the wreckage of his throne room.
"Richard," Arthur said, his voice quiet, terrifyingly steady. "Stand up."
My father looked up, his eyes bloodshot, his jaw trembling. When he saw Arthur standing there—the father he had buried twenty-four hours earlier—his mind shattered. He scrambled backward against the wall, shrieking like a wounded animal. "No... no, it's not real! You're in the ground! We put you in the ground! Eleanor, tell him! Tell him he’s dead!"
Eleanor slowly wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Even with her hair disheveled and her lips blue from asphyxiation, her eyes remained cold, calculating, devoid of human warmth. She looked at Arthur, then at me, and finally down at her husband with undisguised disgust.
"You always were pathetic, Richard," she whispered, her voice rough from the gas. "I told the board we should have poisoned Arthur in his sleep ten years ago. But you were too afraid of him."
"Eleanor," Arthur said, stepping closer. "You were recruited by the Syndicate when you were twenty-two years old, working as an intern in the Treasury Department. You didn't marry my son because you loved him. You married him because you were assigned to infiltrate Vance Ridge."
The room went dead silent, save for the rain lashing against the glass.
I stared at the woman who had raised me, my chest aching with a cold, hollow agony. "Mom... is that true?"
Eleanor didn't flinch. She looked directly into my eyes, her gaze as empty as an open grave. "Your grandfather built a fortress of secrets, Julian. The world belongs to the people who hold the keys to those secrets. Your father was an idiot, but you... you had Arthur's blood. I protected you until you turned that key tonight. But you chose to destroy the empire instead of inheriting it."
She slowly reached into her pocket.
May you like
"Don't move, Eleanor!" Evelyn barked, leveling her rifle at my mother's forehead.
***
