Chapter 61 - The Bastard Seed of Black Oak
The ocean breeze turned instantly to ash in my throat. The screen in Miller’s hand flickered, the green phosphor numbers of the countdown slicing through the predawn darkness of Hampton Roads: *03:59:12... 03:59:11...*
Four hours. A four-hour burn clock planted in the subterranean belly of the only sanctuary I had left on earth.
Thomas’s fingers tightened on my arm. His skin was cold, mottled with the sea salt and grease of the dry dock fight, but his eyes were blazing. "The Governor’s Mansion? That’s impossible. Senator Vance was the highest reach of Arthur’s political pocket. We vetted every line of the Virginia executive branch."
"We vetted the men who took Arthur’s checks," Miller said, her voice dropping into the harsh, flat cadence she used when entering a kill zone. She was already dialing her field office on an encrypted backup handset. "We didn't vet the men who gave Arthur his orders."
I looked over at the prison van idling fifty feet away on the cracked concrete pier. Through the reinforced mesh window, Eleanor’s silhouette remained rigid. She wasn't weeping. She wasn't rocking. Even handcuffed, bound for a federal detention facility in Alexandria, she sat with that grotesque, brittle posture she had drilled into me and Claire since childhood—the posture of a woman whose pride was built on an unmarked grave.
I walked toward the van. Thomas called out, but I didn't stop. Miller signaled the two federal marshals flanking the rear doors to stand down.
"Open it," I said.
The marshal hesitated, caught Miller's nod, and turned the heavy latch. The steel door creaked back on rusted hinges. Eleanor looked up. In the harsh halogen wash of the pier lamps, her face was gaunt, the high cheekbones sharp enough to cut, her pearl earrings stripped away, her expensive wool coat smeared with bilge grime. But when she saw the satellite screen clutched in my fist, the corners of her thin, bloodless mouth curved into an unmistakable sneer.
"You always were so terribly earnest, June," she murmured, her voice barely louder than the lapping tide beneath the dock. "Like a dog that brings back the stick, panting for a biscuit. You think Arthur was the architect? Arthur was a clerk with a pedigree. A weak, stuttering fool who couldn't even keep his own daughters from clawing each other's throats."
I shoved the screen directly into her face. The timer blinked: *03:54:02*.
"Who is in the mansion, Eleanor?" I asked, my voice terrifyingly calm. "Who has the duplicate key to the bedrock vault?"
Eleanor laughed—a dry, clicking sound like dry pine needles underfoot. "You think you won because Claire is in a cage? Claire was the distraction, you idiot. She had all my vanity and none of my restraint. I let her run wild with Arthur’s dummy accounts because I knew she was stupid enough to draw your fire. And look at you. You dragged the federal cavalry all the way to Norfolk, leaving the timber line wide open."
She leaned forward, the smell of burnt hazelnut coffee and sour bile rising from her breath—the very same scent she had carried into my hospital room the morning after Claire tried to throttle the breath out of me.
"Your father didn't build the foundation of Black Oak, June," she whispered, her eyes glittering with venomous delight. "Governor Sterling’s father did. And when the Sterling lineage claims its collateral, they don't use lawyers. They use bulldozers and fire."
My blood ran cold. Governor Julian Sterling. The youngest governor in Virginia’s post-war history, hailed as an uncorrupted reformer, a man who had publicly distanced himself from Arthur Holloway’s industrial lobby during the last legislative cycle.
"He isn't my brother," I breathed.
May you like
Eleanor’s smile widened until her teeth gleamed like polished bone. "Not yours, darling. Claire's. Now go run back to your timber. See if you can dig out your grandmother's bones before Julian turns them into driveway gravel."
***
