Chapter 56 - The DNA Ledger of Black Sand Isle
Elena stared at the radio console as if it were a venomous snake coiled to strike.
"Julian?" Her voice was a cracked whisper, devoid of the love she had once held for him, replaced entirely by cold, unadulterated venom. "You're alive."
*“Elena... thank God,”* Julian coughed, a wet, agonizing sound that crackled through the static. *“Listen to me... there isn't much time. The frequency... they’re triangulation-scanning every civilian band in the sector.”*
"You scouted me," Elena said, her eyes fixed on the surveillance photograph on the desk. "You and your mother. Five years ago. You picked me out of a catalog, Julian. You brought me onto that yacht knowing she was going to throw me into the Atlantic!"
A long, suffocating silence hung over the radio, broken only by the mechanical chirp of the heart monitor on Julian’s end.
*“I didn't know she was going to push you on our wedding day, Elena,”* Julian whispered, his voice trembling with genuine despair. *“I swear to God, I thought we had more time. The trust... the Montgomery Sovereign Trust was written by my grandfather in 1964. It’s an iron vault of twelve billion dollars in untraceable offshore bonds. But the clauses... the clauses are insane.”*
"Explain it," Elena commanded, picking up the Glock she had recovered from the ship and racking the slide with a clean, sharp click that carried clearly over the microphone. "Explain it before I hunt you down myself."
*“The trust cannot be inherited by an heir who has committed a crime, and it cannot be dissolved without a surviving matrilineal sponsor who possesses the Rh-null blood type—the 'Golden Blood',”* Julian breathed, his monitor beeping faster. *“Less than fifty people on the planet have it. My grandfather put that clause in to prevent my mother from assassinating everyone in the family and taking the fortune for herself. She needed a bride who met the genetic parameters. But she couldn't let the bride survive to claim custody.”*
Elena looked down at her own veins, visible through the pale skin of her wrist. Rh-null. The rarest blood on earth. That was why she had been targeted.
"And the baby?" Elena looked toward the crib in the corner of the safehouse, where Scarlett lay sleeping with unnatural calm. "Who is she, Julian? The Coast Guard officer ran her DNA before Thomas murdered him. She’s not yours. She matches Thomas."
*“Thomas is the monster Mother created in the dark,”* Julian answered, his voice dropping to a terrified whisper. *“When Christian and I began to pull away from the empire ten years ago, Mother faked Thomas's death in the Black Sea. She took his genetic material. She’s been running an offshore clinic on Black Sand Isle off the coast of Maine. That child... she’s not my daughter, Elena. She was carried by a surrogate on the island, infused with your stolen ova from your routine fertility checkups last year.”*
Elena felt the room spin. The nausea hit her in waves. "She stole my eggs?"
*“She created the ultimate legal heir,”* Julian wept. *“Your blood. Thomas's ruthless genetics. A child that unlocks the entire trust under Mother’s absolute legal guardianship the moment your death certificate is signed. That’s why Thomas is in Boston. He isn't there just to kill you. He’s there to take you to the Federal District Court at midnight. If you sign the custodial relinquishment under duress before you die, the money clears into Mother’s private war chest.”*
"Where are you, Julian?" Elena demanded. "Where are you broadcasting from?"
*“I’m on an offshore medical barge... five miles outside Boston Harbor. Mother has me locked in the lower quarantine bay. She’s keeping me alive on bypass machines just in case she needs my retinal scan as a backup.”* Julian’s voice began to break up into digital static. *“Don't run, Elena. She owns the police. She owns the courts. There’s only one man who can open the federal vault without her consent. Father Jerome at the Cathedral of St. Jude. He holds the original 1964 charter. Go to him... before Thomas finds—”*
The audio was cut off by the sound of a heavy steel door being kicked open on Julian’s end.
*“Who authorized this transmission?”* a familiar, aristocratic voice chimed through the speaker. Victoria.
*“Mother—no!”* Julian screamed.
A flat, hollow *BANG* echoed through the radio. Then the steady, continuous whine of a flatline alarm.
*“Messy, Julian,”* Victoria’s voice spoke directly into the open line, calm, cold, and triumphant. *“See you at church, Elena. Do dress warmly. It’s quite chilly in the sanctuary.”*
May you like
The connection went dead.
***
