Chapter 25 - The Voice in the Receiver
Ava rose from the sofa, placing herself between Oliver and the antique desk. The snub-nosed revolver in her hand was slick with her cold sweat. The rhythmic ringing of the disconnected rotary phone echoed through the cavernous brownstone like the heartbeat of an approaching predator.
*Brrrrring.*
She stepped forward, her boots silent on the Persian rug. The severed copper wire lay clearly visible on the hardwood floor, frayed and lifeless, coated in ten years of undisturbed dust. There was no physical current feeding into the cradle.
Her hand hovered over the heavy black handset.
"Answer it, Ava," she whispered to herself, steeling her nerve. "You’ve come too far to fear ghosts."
She picked up the receiver and brought it to her ear.
There was no dial tone. Only the deep, rhythmic hiss of oceanic static, like the sound of waves crashing against a rocky reef in the middle of a winter storm. Then, out of the white noise, came a breath. Slow. Measured. Utterly familiar.
"You always were too brave for your own good, Ava," a low, resonant voice rumbled across the line.
Ava’s knuckles turned white around the receiver. The voice was unmistakable. It had directed corporate boards, commanded multi-billion-dollar acquisitions, and read her bedtime stories when she was six years old.
"Nicholas," she said, her voice dropping into a razor-sharp whisper. "You’re alive."
A dry, bitter chuckle drifted through the static. "Alive is a matter of legal definition, my dear. Biologically? Yes. Legally? I ceased to exist nine months ago when the *Sovereign* went down off Nantucket."
"You abandoned your family," Ava hissed, rage burning through her veins like kerosene. "You let Julian turn the estate into a slaughterhouse! He tried to kill Oliver! He blew the balcony out from under his feet!"
"Julian is a rabid dog who misunderstood his purpose," Nicholas said, his voice chillingly devoid of emotion. "He thought he was securing his own throne. He never realized he was simply stress-testing the perimeter."
Ava felt a cold shudder ripple down her spine. "Stress-testing? You’re talking about a two-year-old child! You let Julian try to murder him!"
"A child?" Nicholas paused, the static hissing louder in the earpiece. "You saw the sequencing, didn't you? Lowe showed you the data before Julian’s team eliminated him."
"Oliver is your clone," Ava said, the words tasting like poison on her tongue. "You engineered him to bypass the inheritance laws."
"I engineered him to survive *me*," Nicholas replied, the words chillingly deliberate. "Julian believes the boy is Raymond's bastard. He believes that by killing him, he can claim the Mercer Trust. But Julian doesn't know the most important rule of the game, Ava."
"What rule?"
"Never trust the shepherd who guides the sheep to the slaughter," Nicholas whispered. His voice turned dark, intimate, and horrifyingly close. "Where is Elena, Ava?"
Ava blinked, her pulse spiking. "Elena is dead! She sacrificed herself at the clinic so Oliver and I could escape the hit squad!"
Silence stretched across the line for three agonizing seconds. Then Nicholas let out another low, terrifying chuckle.
"Look at the mantelpiece, Ava. Look at the camera hidden inside the brass clock."
Ava whipped her head around toward the fireplace mantel. Inside the filigreed carving of the antique clock, a tiny, pulsing red diode was blinking in the darkness.
"Elena Vance is Detective Frank Vance’s daughter," Nicholas revealed with cold precision. "Her family debt to the syndicate was bought out by Julian three years ago. The grenade that exploded in that basement wasn't an execution, Ava. It was a flash-bang extraction. Elena isn't dead. She’s currently guiding Julian’s convoy to your exact coordinates."
Ava dropped the receiver onto the desk.
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At that exact moment, through the heavy velvet curtains of the front parlor, the high-beam headlights of three black SUVs swept across the ceiling in blinding, predatory arcs.
***
