Chapter 10 - Cracks in the Dynasty
The air inside the hospital room turned freezing cold.
The narrative we had spent the last twelve hours fighting—the narrative of a spoiled, psychopathic sister-in-law and a greedy, spineless husband—was only the surface layer of a much deeper, far more terrifying conspiracy.
Piper hadn't just pushed Willa out of random spite or psychotic temper.
She had been ordered to do it. Julian had been forced to watch it.
They were cornered rats executing a hit on their own child to satisfy a loan shark in an Italian suit.
"Who was the man, Willa?" I asked, sitting gently on the edge of the bed, keeping my voice as calm as humanly possible so as not to terrify her. "Did you hear his name?"
Willa nodded slowly. "Daddy called him Mr. Vance."
I jerked my head toward Mark. "Arthur?"
"Arthur doesn't wear the Sterling pin," Mark said, his face pale. "Arthur is small-time legal cleanup. But Arthur has an older son. Gabriel Vance. The CEO of Sterling Capital."
Mark’s hands began to fly across his laptop keyboard, pulling up corporate registries and private financial disclosures.
"Gabriel Vance bought the debt," Mark muttered, reading the glowing lines of text. "He orchestrated the entire financial collapse of the Bellamy estate from the inside. He gave Eleanor the bad investments. He fed Piper’s gambling debts in Macau. He bled them dry until the only asset left on the board was Willa’s life insurance policy."
"And Arthur protected them legally so the insurance company wouldn't suspect foul play," I said, the horrifying symmetry of the plot unfolding before me. "They were going to split the seventy-five million dollars between Sterling and Arthur, leaving Julian and Eleanor with just enough to pay their legal bills."
"And leave you to take the blame for the murder," Mark finished, his jaw clenched so hard a muscle twitched beneath his scar. "A penniless, psychotic mother who snapped. A tragedy for the tabloids. A clean corporate payout for Gabriel Vance."
Suddenly, the lights in the pediatric suite flickered once. Twice.
The television screen mounted on the wall snapped to black.
The rhythmic hum of the ICU air conditioning system died, replaced by a high-pitched, metallic whine from the hallway backup generators.
I stood up instantly, my instincts screaming. "Mark."
Mark reached for his waistband, drawing the Glock 19. "The power grid just got cut."
Outside in the corridor, the two NYPD officers moved toward the center of the hallway, their hands on their holsters.
"Command, this is Post 4," one officer barked into his shoulder radio. "We lost primary power on East 4. Backup lights only. We need a status check on the electrical room."
Through the radio, only loud, abrasive static hissed back.
Then came the soft, muffled *thwip-thwip* of a suppressed firearm.
The officer speaking into the radio jerked violently, blood blossoming through the center of his chest. He collapsed against the wall, sliding down into a lifeless heap. His partner drew his weapon, but before he could raise it, three more rounds tore through the frosted glass panel of our door, shattering it into a million crystal shards.
The second officer fell without making a sound.
"Down! Behind the bed!" Mark roared, grabbing Willa by the waist and pulling her onto the floor beside me.
He raised his weapon and fired two rounds through the shattered doorway into the smoke-filled corridor. A heavy thud sounded outside as someone went down, but the heavy, deliberate footsteps of multiple boots continued to advance.
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"They aren't waiting for the legal system to fail," Mark breathed, reloading his magazine with trembling precision. "Gabriel Vance is burning the evidence."
***
