Chapter 37 - The Scent of Bitter Almonds
Before Daniel could pull the trigger a second time, Vance caught his arm. "Daniel, don't! If you kill her, we lose the only link to the girl's location!"
Daniel was breathing in ragged, violent gasps. Every muscle in his body screamed for blood, but Clara’s voice cut through the madness: "Daniel, look at her neck! She’s convulsing!"
Katherine’s jaw snapped shut with a sickening crack. Her pupils dilated instantly, her body arching in a violent seizure as white foam bubbled around her lips. A distinct, sickening scent filled the humid air of the ruined study—the unmistakable smell of bitter almonds.
"Potassium cyanide," Vance cursed, pulling Daniel back. "A pressure capsule embedded in a molar. She activated it the second the guards were down."
Katherine’s body shuddered once, twice, and then went entirely limp. Her lifeless, emerald eyes stared up at the painted ceiling of Havencrest, frozen in a grotesque, triumphant grin.
"She’s gone," Clara whispered, checking the pulse at the woman’s carotid artery. "Daniel... what did she mean? 'She took hers'?"
Daniel turned away from the corpse, his hands trembling so violently he nearly dropped the rifle. He looked at the satellite screen on the desk. The camera in the Medical Vault was still broadcasting.
Someone stepped into the camera’s frame.
It was not a double. It was not a surrogate.
This woman moved with an unmistakable, regal elegance that Daniel recognized in the deepest marrow of his bones. She wore a tailored white suit, unblemished by the rain or the violence. She turned directly toward the lens, lifting Hannah—wrapped in a soft cashmere blanket—into her arms.
"Daniel," the woman spoke. Her voice came through the transponder's speakers with crystal-clear, chilling intimacy.
It was Eleanor. The original Eleanor.
"Four years ago, you thought you bought Elizabeth Sterling from the Blackwood sanitarium," Eleanor said calmly, smoothing Hannah’s hair with a mother’s gentle touch. "You thought Elizabeth died in that crash. You thought this child was a miracle born from tragedy. But Elizabeth never existed, Daniel. She was my first mask. My earliest canvas."
Daniel dropped the rifle. It hit the floor with a hollow clang. "No... no, that's impossible. Elizabeth loved me."
"Elizabeth was a fiction designed to infiltrate your family's vault," Eleanor’s voice continued, cold, calculated, and devoid of human warmth. "I carried this child in my own womb. I gave birth to her under Elizabeth's name, and then I staged Elizabeth's death so I could return as the cruel stepmother—to make you despise me, to push you into filing the trust funds in Hannah's sole name."
May you like
Eleanor smiled through the monitor—a smile that made Daniel's heart feel as though it were being slowly crushed in a vice.
"You signed the irrevocable inheritance papers three days ago, Daniel. Hannah now owns ninety percent of the Sterling global holdings. And as her biological mother, legally restored by court documents filed this very hour in Geneva... I am her sole guardian."
