Chapter 19 - The Chapel on the Bluffs
The wooden splinters rained down onto the linoleum, but the figure that stumbled through the broken pane was not a hired enforcer.
It was Jessica Vance.
Her designer silk blouse was torn at the shoulder, soaked through with mud and harbor brine. The immaculate, golden composure she had worn at the wedding rehearsal was utterly demolished. Her blonde hair hung in wet, tangled ropes around her hollow face, and a jagged purple contusion blossomed across her right cheekbone. In her trembling, dirt-caked hand, she held a snub-nosed .38 revolver, pointed wildly at the floor.
"Arthur!" she gasped, her voice cracked and hysterical. "Arthur, don't shoot! Please... don't shoot!"
Arthur stepped out from behind the filing cabinet, his expression cold as granite, the iron crowbar held low at his side. "Put the gun on the table, Jessica."
She looked at him with wide, bloodshot eyes, her chest heaving as if she had run miles through the marsh. "You don't understand... they took him! They weren't supposed to take him! That wasn't the arrangement!"
"Put it down," Arthur repeated, his voice carrying the authority of an executioner.
Her fingers went slack. The revolver clattered against the pine floorboards and slid toward my feet. I kicked it behind the safe without taking my eyes off her.
"Where is my son?" I demanded, stepping forward, every maternal instinct in my body flaring into raw fury. "Where have you taken Daniel?"
Jessica collapsed onto her knees, burying her bruised face in her trembling hands. A dry, choking sob tore out of her throat. "I didn't take him! God, Margaret, you think I wanted this? My father owed twenty million dollars to the Van der Bilt syndicate in Antwerp! They told him fifteen years ago that if he didn't secure the harbor rights, they would bury him in a concrete footing! When his cardiac fraud scheme failed, they came to me!"
"You were their creature from the start," Arthur said mercilessly.
"They owned everything I had!" she screamed, looking up, mascara running down her mud-stained cheeks. "My car, my apartment in Boston, my trust fund—every dime had a lien on it! They told me if I married Daniel, the patents would automatically merge into the family trust under maritime survivorship laws, and the debt would be wiped clean! But your son wouldn't break! Even when I insulted your mother, even when I tried to isolate him, he held onto that goddamned family loyalty!"
"And at the altar?" I asked, my voice shaking with disgust. "When Daniel threw the truth in your face?"
"They cut my father loose that very night," she whispered, shivering violently. "They let Richard take the federal fall because he had outlived his usefulness. But this morning... when the magistrate granted the bond, it wasn't my father's lawyers who paid it. It was Julian Sterling."
Arthur’s face drained of color. "Sterling is alive?"
"He arrived on a private yacht from Halifax at dawn," Jessica said, her teeth chattering. "He has Daniel at the old Mariner's Chapel on the northern bluffs. The one abandoned after the hurricane of ninety-three. He’s running an emergency lien hearing using a crooked offshore notary right now. If Daniel doesn't sign the transfer deeds before noon, Sterling is going to scuttle the support vessel with Daniel inside the bilge."
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"Why did you come here?" I asked, staring at the ruined woman kneeling on our floor.
Jessica looked at me, her eyes filled with genuine, animal terror. "Because Sterling told me that once Daniel signs, my name is on the secondary liability rider. He’s going to kill me, Margaret. He’s going to kill all of us."
