Chapter 14 - Blood in the Sugar Maple Woods
Daniel threw his truck into park and jumped out before the tires had even stopped spinning, his boots skidding in the gravel and broken glass.
"Emily!" he screamed, his voice raw, tearing against the howling wind. "Emily!"
The truck was empty. The steering wheel airbag had deployed, dusted with white powder and spotted with fresh crimson droplets. On the passenger side floorboard, Grace’s small pink woolen mitten lay soaked in mud.
Daniel’s vision tunneled. The world dissolved into pure, red-hot adrenaline. He dropped to his knees beside the passenger door, scanning the ground. Footprints. Two distinct sets. One small, dragging—Emily, injured, carrying Grace. The other set was heavy, wide-tread combat boots pursuing her into the dense sugar maple woods bordering the state forest.
"Hold on, Em," Daniel muttered between clenched teeth, drawing his sidearm and sprinting into the tree line. "I'm coming."
Inside the forest, branches whipped Emily’s face like thorny lashes. Her left ankle was sprained, sending searing daggers of agony up her leg with every limping step, but she refused to stop. She clutched two-year-old Grace tightly against her chest with one arm, using her other hand to push through the choking brush.
Grace was sobbing quietly, her little face buried in Emily’s sweater. "Mama... Mama, hurts..."
"Shh, baby, mama has you," Emily whispered, tears blurring her eyes as blood trickled from a gash on her forehead where her head had slammed against the steering wheel. "Mama’s got you, my angel. We're almost safe."
It was a lie. They were miles from civilization, surrounded by thousands of acres of wilderness, and the relentless crunching of leaves behind them was growing louder.
"Running is undignified, Emily," a deep, resonant voice echoed through the trees, smooth as crushed velvet and utterly devoid of mercy. "Just like your entire pathetic existence in my family's affairs."
Emily spun around, backing against the trunk of a massive, ancient oak tree.
Stepping out from behind the pines was Thomas Cole. He wore an elegant charcoal overcoat over tactical armor, holding a silenced submachine gun loosely at his side. Beside him, stepping gingerly over the rotting logs in velvet designer slippers, was Margaret Sterling.
Margaret looked like a ghost risen from a crypt. Her hair had grown out into streaks of silver, her cheeks hollowed by months of prison rations, but her eyes blazed with a terrifying, predatory madness. She looked at Emily the way an exterminator looks at a cockroach.
"You took everything from me, you lowborn little whore," Margaret hissed, her voice vibrating with venomous venom. "My reputation. My son. My empire. You disgraced the Sterling name across every tabloid in the world."
Emily gripped Grace tighter, standing as tall as her shattered ankle would allow. "You threw me off a balcony, Margaret! You tried to murder your own grandchild!"
Margaret tilted her head, her thin lips parting in a grotesque smile. "Grace is a Sterling. She belongs in an estate in Geneva, raised by tutors and aristocracy, not rotting in a peasant’s barn picking apples. Once you are removed from the equation, Julian will crumble, and I will shape that child into a true dynastic ruler."
Margaret turned to Cole. "Take the girl. And put two bullets through Emily's heart. Make sure she falls facedown in the mud."
Cole raised his weapon, leveling the barrel directly between Emily’s eyes.
"Say goodbye to your bastard, girl," Cole muttered.
Emily squeezed her eyes shut, turning her back to shield Grace with her entire spine, waiting for the fatal sting of the bullet.
*BANG.*
The deafening shot echoed across the valley. But the bullet didn't hit Emily.
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Instead, Thomas Cole grunted, his shoulder jerking violently as a high-powered rifle round ripped through his collarbone, throwing him backward into the brush.
From the ridge above, Daniel’s voice boomed like rolling thunder: "Step away from my sister, you psychotic old witch, or the next one takes your head off!"
