Chapter 15 - Blood on the Sheepskin
Julian did not think. He did not negotiate. The primal rage of a father who had already lost his wife, and was now watching his daughter’s life being stolen, unleashed a monster within him.
With a roar that tore through the rafters of the old estate, Julian charged.
He drove his shoulder straight into the intruder’s midsection, carrying them both across the nursery floor with devastating momentum. They crashed into the antique mahogany bookshelf; heavy hardcovers and porcelain figurines rained down upon them like shrapnel.
The intruder twisted with lethal, military efficiency, driving an elbow into Julian’s ribs. Julian gasped as cartilage cracked, but he refused to release his grip. He grabbed the intruder’s tactical vest, slamming their head against the floorboards once, twice.
The intruder snarled, sweeping their combat boot beneath Julian’s knees, flipping him onto his back. The blade flashed in the moonlight—a six-inch serrated hunting knife coming down straight for Julian’s throat.
Julian caught the assailant’s wrist with both hands inches from his jugular. The cold steel trembled in the air. Julian stared up into the tactical mask—and froze.
Behind the ballistic goggles were eyes he recognized instantly.
Hazel eyes. Flecked with gold. Cold, dead, and entirely devoid of human empathy.
*Marcus Kane.* Victoria’s former personal chauffeur and private security contractor—the man who had mysteriously vanished forty-eight hours before Victoria poured the boiling soup on Lily, the man police had been hunting across three continents.
"Where is she, Marcus?!" Julian choked out, his muscles trembling under the crushing downward force of the knife. "WHERE IS MY DAUGHTER?!"
"She's already halfway to the river, Sterling," Marcus hissed, his breath hot and sour against Julian's face. "Victoria wanted you to watch your life burn down slowly, just like you burned hers in that courtroom. You took her freedom. We're taking your future."
Marcus leaned his full body weight down, the serrated tip piercing the skin of Julian’s neck. A trickle of hot blood ran down Julian’s collar.
*CRACK!*
A heavy brass fire poker struck Marcus Kane across the side of his skull with sickening force.
Marcus’s eyes rolled back. His grip went limp. He collapsed sideways onto the floor like a sack of wet cement.
Standing behind him, panting heavily, her face splattered with Marcus’s blood, was Martha Vance. She gripped the heavy iron poker with two trembling, white-knuckled hands, her nightgown stained with soot from the garden fire.
"Martha..." Julian gasped, rolling over and clutching his bleeding throat.
"She’s in the dumbwaiter, Julian!" Martha cried out, dropping the poker and pointing with a frantic, shaking hand toward the corner of the nursery. "I heard them creeping up the back servant stairs! I took Lily while the alarm was ringing and lowered her down to the kitchen scullery! GO! GET HER!"
Julian scrambled to his feet, ignoring the agony in his cracked ribs. He bolted out of the nursery, sliding down the spiral servants' staircase that led directly behind the pantry walls.
He burst into the ground-floor scullery.
The heavy wooden hatch of the antique dumbwaiter was latched from the outside with a broomstick. Julian ripped the stick away and pulled the hatch open.
Curled in a tiny, shivering ball inside the dark wooden shaft was Lily. Her face was soaked in tears, her little hands clamped over her ears, but she was alive. Unharmed.
"Daddy!" she wailed, lunging forward into his arms.
Julian crushed her against his chest, collapsing onto the tiled scullery floor, burying his face in her hair as heavy sobs racked his entire body. "I've got you, baby. I've got you. Nobody is ever going to touch you again."
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Above them, through the dumbwaiter shaft, the sharp, distinctive crack of a gunshot echoed from the nursery.
***
