Chapter 13 - The Mistress's Confession
I did not take a step back. I did not raise my weapon. I stood in the doorway of the crypt, rain dripping from the hem of my coat, and measured the distance between her thumb and the toggle switch.
"Seven feet," I said quietly. "If you depress that switch, the blast wave within these stone walls will liquify your internal organs in less than three milliseconds. You won't even hear the explosion."
"You think I care about dying?" Victoria laughed, a ragged, choking sound that ended in a sob. "I’ve been dead since the day Richard went to prison! Do you know what they did to me, Katherine? You thought Richard’s trial was the end of it. You took back the money, you took the patents, you left him to rot, and you thought the universe balanced its scales!"
"You chose to sleep with a thief, Victoria. You helped him forge my signature on the divestment documents. You testified that I was an abusive, delusional lunatic who attacked him in our kitchen."
"Because he told me they would kill my sister!" she shrieked, the sound ricocheting off the granite walls. Tears cut tracks through the soot on her face. "Richard didn't steal your company for himself! He owed seventy million dollars to an offshore consortium called the Cadence Apex Group. They owned his debt from his failed casinos in Macau. When he couldn't pay, they gave him an ultimatum: bring them the neural-regeneration blueprints your father developed, or they would send him back to his mother in pieces."
I felt a cold prickle of realization spread through my chest. "Richard was a puppet."
"He was a desperate, cowardly dog," Victoria spat, her hands shaking so hard the detonator rattled against her knuckles. "And when you showed up in court... when you took off that coat and showed Judge Abernathy the surgical scars, the serial numbers tattooed into your skin by the clinic Richard locked you in... you didn't just expose Richard. You exposed Abernathy."
"Abernathy was on Cadence’s payroll," I stated.
"Abernathy was the Chairman of Cadence’s North American trust!" Victoria cried. "That’s why he turned ghost-white when you showed the judge’s private seal branded onto your shoulder! You knew! You knew Abernathy had authorized your illegal commitment to that black-site clinic in Pennsylvania!"
"Of course I knew," I replied coolly. "I spent three years gathering the registry of every member of the Cadence Apex Group. Why do you think Abernathy ruled in my favor that afternoon? He didn't find sudden morality. He knew that if he didn't grant my injunction within sixty seconds, an automated script would release the offshore wire transfers directly to the Department of Justice."
Victoria stared at me, her jaw slackening in sheer disbelief. "You... you had the entire courtroom orchestrated before you even walked in."
"I don't leave my survival to the conscience of men," I said, taking one measured step forward. "Now tell me, Victoria. Where is Richard?"
Victoria began to weep softly, her thumb slipping slightly from the trigger. "They didn't break him out to save him, Katherine. They took him because the formula you released to the Nobel committee... it was incomplete. You held back the terminal stabilizer, didn't you?"
A slow, razor-thin smile touched the corners of my mouth. "A brilliant scientist never publishes the keystone. If the world has the lock, only I possess the key."
"They're torturing him," Victoria whispered. "In the sub-level of the old Manhattan Harbor terminal. They told me if I didn't lure you here, if I didn't get your biometric key from your medallion, they would skin my family alive. Please, Katherine... please."
Before she could finish her sentence, a high-velocity crack split the night.
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The stained-glass window above the crypt exploded inward. A crimson blossom bloomed directly in the center of Victoria's forehead. Her eyes went glassy, her body went limp, and as she tumbled toward the floor, the detonator slipped from her dying fingers.
***
