Chapter 7 - A Mother's Fury
Harrison lay on the floor, gasping for breath, his vision slowly snapping back into focus as the atropine fought the venom in his veins. The color was returning to his skin, but his muscles were still trembling with profound weakness.
He looked up at Clara.
She was standing in the center of the study, holding an antique iron fireplace poker she had snatched from the hearth. Her knuckles were white. Her eyes burned with a ferocity that terrified him more than the men outside.
“Harrison,” Clara said without turning her head. “Can you enter the panic vault code?”
Harrison pushed himself up onto his elbows, wiping bile from his chin. “The vault... is behind the library hearth. But the corridor is swarming with Vance’s mercenaries. We’ll never make it back.”
“We’re not going to the vault,” Clara said, her voice dropping into a deadly, icy whisper. “We’re ending this here.”
The study door splintered inward with a deafening crack. A section of the mahogany panel gave way, revealing the barrel of a tactical shotgun.
*BOOM!*
The lock was blown out in a cloud of smoking splinters.
The door swung inward.
The first mercenary stepped through the threshold, sweeping his suppressed carbine left toward the desk.
He never saw Clara.
Stepping out from behind the doorframe, Clara swung the heavy iron poker with the full torque of her hips, shoulders, and maternal rage. The solid iron rod struck the mercenary across the side of his tactical helmet with the force of a sledgehammer. The crack echoed like a gunshot. The man’s head snapped sideways, his knees collapsing instantly as he dropped unconscious to the floor, his rifle clattering across the rugs.
“Clear the door!” a second voice shouted from the hallway.
Harrison, fueled by the adrenaline surging from the atropine shot, lunged across the floor like an injured tiger. He seized the fallen mercenary’s sidearm—a Sig Sauer P320—from the holster, rolled onto his back, and fired three rounds through the open doorway.
*BANG! BANG! BANG!*
A grunt of agony followed. The second mercenary stumbled backward into the rotunda, clutching his shattered shoulder, collapsing against the marble stairs.
Harrison staggered to his feet, leaning heavily against the doorframe, the smoking gun in his hand. His chest heaved, but his hands were steady. The businessman was gone; the father had taken his place.
“Clara, take Lily,” Harrison commanded, his voice deep, gravelly, and lethal.
“Harrison, you’re in no condition to fight—”
“I let this woman into our home,” Harrison said, turning his head to look Clara dead in the eye. “I let her touch our daughter. I let her destroy your life. I am finishing this.”
From the far end of the grand gallery, the sound of clapping echoed slowly.
*Clap. Clap. Clap.*
Evelyn walked into the illuminated section of the rotunda. She had discarded her broken heels, standing barefoot on the marble, holding a silver Beretta 9mm loosely at her side. Her silk gown was torn and bloodstained, her face a twisted mask of hysterical fury and venom.
Behind her, stepping through the shattered glass of the terrace doors, was a man in an immaculate charcoal bespoke suit, holding an umbrella against the howling storm.
Julian Vance.
The billionaire hedge-fund titan had arrived in person to oversee the final slaughter.
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“Bravo, Harrison,” Vance said, stepping into the rotunda and folding his umbrella with surgical calm. “Truly an inspiring performance. Arthur would have been proud of your tenacity. Too bad it ends in a pool of your own blood.”
***
