Chapter 27 - Echoes of the Sovereign Court
The two mercenaries beside Jonathan's bed did not raise their weapons; they stood with their hands clasped behind their backs, looking more like palace eunuchs guarding an ancient emperor than modern soldiers.
"Drop your weapon, Clara," Jonathan rasped, raising one frail hand in a gesture of dismissive authority. "If you fire a single round in this chamber, the acoustic sensors will trip the halon suppression sequence instantly. We will all suffocate together in five minutes. And while my lungs are already ruined, I imagine you two still harbor some pathetic, sentimental desire to draw breath."
Clara did not lower her rifle. Her crosshairs remained fixed directly between Jonathan's sunken eyes. "I would gladly choke on halon gas to watch you die, Jonathan."
"Ah, the melodrama of the betrayed wife," Jonathan mocked, his thin lips curling into a sneer. He turned his gaze slowly toward me. "And you, Evelyn. My brilliant, ambitious corporate bride. Did you honestly believe you and Clara were the architects of my downfall?"
A cold prickle of unease stirred in my chest. "The ledger we exposed in Monaco destroyed your shell network. Your empire is in liquidation."
Jonathan began to laugh, a wet, rattling sound that deteriorated into a violent, racking cough. One of the mercenaries stepped forward, administering a clear injection into his central line, waiting impassively until Jonathan's breathing stabilized once more.
"You exposed what I *allowed* you to expose," Jonathan whispered, his voice trembling with venomous amusement. "The sovereign network was forty years old, Evelyn. It was weighed down by three thousand corrupt politicians, judges, and bankers who were demanding larger and larger shares of the sovereign yield. They had become greedy. They had become a liability."
My breath caught. "You staged your own prosecution."
"I needed the old House of Duncan to die," Jonathan said, his obsidian eyes gleaming with triumph. "I needed the regulators, the Department of Justice, the International Criminal Court, and the media to believe the beast was slain. And who better to perform the execution than two beautiful, wronged women? You were my executioners, my darlings. You purged my balance sheet of its dead weight. You wiped out fifteen billion dollars in sovereign debt by forcing the state to confiscate worthless, over-leveraged shell companies!"
Clara’s knuckles turned white against the stock of her rifle. "You used us to default on your obligations."
"I used you to achieve absolute perfection," Jonathan snarled, his voice rising in sudden, hysterical power. "The twenty billion dollars sitting behind those servers is clean. Untouchable. Stripped of every past liability. And all that is required to finalize the transfer to my new, untraceable offshore entities is the alignment of the three rings!"
He reached onto the blanket, his claw-like fingers closing around a third platinum band—the master ring he had stolen from the federal evidence warehouse.
May you like
"Shoot him, Clara," I whispered.
"If she fires, the halon deploys," Jonathan challenged, his face contorted in madness as he raised the master ring toward the console's scanning array. "We die together, or I ascend alone. Place your hands on the console, Evelyn! Witness the rebirth of Duncan Apex!"
