“Still pretending to be a soldier?” my brother laughed as my entire family humiliated me at our backyard barbecue, but seconds later, a V-22 Osprey landed outside, two officers saluted me, and my father finally realized he had no idea who his daughter really was. / Chapter 87 / 100

Chapter 87 - The Matriarch's Sanctuary

The room fell dead silent, save for the rhythmic, electronic hum of the server banks and the ticking sound of the outbound cipher transmission reaching ninety-four percent.

"Lower your weapons," Eleanor said calmly, her finger resting lightly against the black toggle on the detonator. "Or none of us leave this mountain alive. There are two hundred pounds of high-grade plastic explosive packed into the structural pillars of this room. If my thumb slips, the entire west wing of Blackwood Hall collapses forty feet into the limestone caverns below."

My operators held their positions, their rifle sights pinned unblinkingly between her eyes.

I lowered my carbine slightly, letting it hang on its tactical sling, and stepped forward until I stood three feet from the desk.

"You really haven't changed, Mother," I said, my voice dangerously soft. "Still ready to murder everyone in the room rather than admit you lost."

Eleanor smiled faintly, tilting her head with the same patronizing indulgence she used to give me when I was a ten-year-old girl refusing to wear white dresses to church.

"Lost, Elena? Look at that monitor," she said, nodding toward the server screen. "In four minutes, the transmission finishes. The funds have already been deposited into numbered accounts in the Cayman Islands, Singapore, and Zurich. Even if you shoot me, you cannot stop the algorithmic release. The old world is burning, darling. I merely struck the match."

"And what was Jake?" I asked, gesturing back toward the doorway where Jake was slowly pulling himself to his feet, leaning against the doorframe, his face bruised and pale. "What was Father? What was I?"

Eleanor didn't even look at Jake. Her eyes stayed locked on mine.

"Your father was a weak, sentimental drunk who squandered three generations of legacy on bad investments and soft-hearted philanthropy," she spat, her aristocratic mask finally slipping to reveal the venom underneath. "He thought a man's honor mattered. Honor is a fairy tale told to peasants so they don't burn down the manor house."

She shifted her gaze slightly toward Jake, a sneer curling her lip. "And Jacob was everything your father was, but without the spine. A vain, gullible idiot who lived for the applause of empty rooms. I gave him a company to play with so that when the federal hounds smelled the blood, they would tear him apart while I walked out the back door."

Jake let out a ragged, strangled noise—half sob, half groan.

"And me?" I asked, my voice deadly level. "Why try so hard to push me away? Why mock me every time I came home in uniform?"

"Because you were the only dangerous thing in this family," Eleanor hissed, her knuckles whitening against the detonator. "From the day you were born, you looked at me with those cold, suspicious eyes. You refused to be managed. You refused to be bought. When you joined the military, I thought you would die in some godforsaken desert and save me the trouble. But you didn't die. You came back with rank, with authority, and with the one thing I could never buy: absolute loyalty from people with guns."