Chapter 27 - The Midnight Intruder
The red and blue flashing lights painted the leaded glass windows in rhythmic strokes of blood and ice. Richard stared at the reflections dancing across the ceiling, his breathing coming in ragged, shallow gasps.
"Elena," he whispered, turning to me, his hands reaching out, fingers curled like dry claws. "Elena, listen to me. You are my daughter. My blood. We can settle this. Vance can withdraw the petition. I have four hundred thousand dollars in gold bullion hidden beneath the wine cellar floor. It’s yours. All of it. For Lily. For her education. Just tell them... tell them Sarah is an impostor. Tell them Charles was demented when he recorded that tape!"
I looked at the man who had terrified my childhood, who had made my mother weep behind closed bathroom doors, who had looked at my innocent six-year-old child and tried to crush her spirit before she even knew what cruelty was.
"Lily doesn't want your gold, Richard," I said, my voice dead and cold. "And neither do I."
A sudden, desperate madness flared in his eyes. Seeing Arthur step into the hallway to hail the approaching deputies, Richard lunged toward the desk. He didn't grab the gold or the ledgers.
His fingers snatched a heavy silver letter opener from the blotter, its blade ten inches of pointed steel.
"You destroyed me!" he screamed, his face twisting into an animal snarl as he charged toward me. "You and that bastard child of yours!"
"Elena!" Miles roared, diving forward.
Miles tackled Richard by the waist, the impact slamming both men into the side of the mahogany desk. The letter opener went flying, skittering across the polished floorboards and vanishing into the embers of the trash can with a shower of sparks.
Richard fought with the hysterical, wiry strength of a cornered beast, clawing at Miles’s face, his fingernails tearing a bloody welt across Miles’s cheek. But Miles did not let go. He twisted Richard’s arm behind his back, forcing the old man down onto the cold floor, pinning his shoulder against the Persian carpet.
"Don't touch my wife," Miles ground out between his teeth, his voice shaking with a fury I had never heard from him in ten years of marriage. "And don't you ever speak our daughter's name again."
The library doors burst open.
Four county deputies, their firearms drawn, surged into the room, their boots tracking mud across the antique rugs.
"Sheriff's department! Nobody move!"
"He's all yours, officers," Arthur said calmly from the doorway, pocketing his phone. "The suspect has just attempted aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, on top of the felony arson currently warming the room."
Deputy Miller knelt, clicking the steel cuffs over Richard’s wrists with two dry, final snaps.
When they pulled Richard to his feet, his suit was ruined, his face smeared with soot and his own saliva. He looked at me, his eyes wide and vacant, stripped of the power that had held Sussex County in thrall for half a century.
May you like
"You're a mistake," Richard hissed at me, his voice a ragged whisper as they dragged him toward the door. "You should have been left at the river with her."
"The only mistake made in this family," Sarah said from the doorway, her voice ringing clear above the sirens outside, "was letting you think you were a man."
