Chapter 29 - The Key to the Offshore Ghost Fleet
Elena rode the elevator up through the screaming heart of the mansion.
When the brass elevator doors opened on the third-floor residential wing, the air was already thin, sharp with the sweet, chemical tang of halon gas.
Down the long mahogany corridor, bodies of Newport’s elite lay scattered across the oriental runners like discarded mannequins—senators and debutantes slumped against the wainscoting, clawing at their throats, suffocated in their diamonds and pearls. The gas didn't kill with violence; it starved the brain of oxygen in minutes.
Elena pulled her silk scarf over her mouth and nose, breathing shallowly through her teeth.
She walked straight to the master suite.
The double doors were unlocked. Inside, Julian lay sprawled across the Persian rug before the marble fireplace. He was still alive, his chest heaving in violent, spasmodic convulsions as his body fought the twin poisons—the aconite from the champagne and the oxygen-deprived air of the room.
His face was mottled purple. His eyes, bloodshot and wide with primal terror, rolled toward the doorway as Elena entered.
Elena didn't rush. She walked to the fireplace, looked down at her dying husband, and crouched on one knee beside him.
"Elena..." Julian wheezed, a pathetic, bubbling sound. His trembling, manicured hand reached out, trying to grasp the hem of her torn black gown. "Help... please... the codes... in the safe..."
Elena looked at him with an expression so cold it belonged on a glacier.
"There is no safe, Julian," she whispered softly, leaning in until her breath brushed his ear. "Charlotte is dead. The board of directors is dead downstairs. And Victoria is sitting in a safehouse in Lisbon, waiting for the news that her bloodline has been cleansed."
Julian’s eyes bulged. A single tear of terror spilled down his purple cheek.
Elena reached out, took his left hand, and twisted the platinum signet ring—the one containing the master encryption key for the offshore ghost fleet—off his finger. The skin resisted, but she pulled hard, dislocating his joint with a sickening pop until the ring came free in her palm.
"You were right about one thing, Julian," Elena whispered, standing up and towering over him like an angel of death. "Your mother was a monster. But she didn't breed me to be a victim. She bred me to replace her."
Julian’s heaving chest gave one final, shuddering spasm. His jaw went slack, his eyes fixing on the crystal chandelier above him, frozen in an eternal stare of uncomprehending horror.
Julian Montgomery was dead.
Suddenly, a sharp, rhythmic chime echoed through the silent room.
Elena turned.
Sitting on the mahogany nightstand beside Julian’s bed was a disposable satellite burner phone. The screen was flashing with an unlisted maritime frequency from the North Atlantic.
Elena stepped over Julian’s body, picked up the phone, and pressed the speaker button.
A sound came through the small speaker.
Not the raspy voice of Victoria.
The sound was the rhythmic, mechanical hiss of an oxygen ventilator... followed by the slow, deliberate clapping of gloved hands.
"Well played, my darling," Victoria’s unmistakable voice rasped through the speaker, layered with the metallic hum of an artificial larynx. "Julian was always so dramatically disappointing. But Charlotte... I had high hopes for Charlotte."
Elena’s knuckles turned white around the phone. "Where are you, Victoria?"
May you like
A dry, rattling chuckle echoed through the line. "Look out the master balcony window, Elena. Toward the harbor."
***
