Chapter 7 - Bloodline ReckoningZ
The warehouse was dead silent save for the drumming of the storm against the corrugated roof and the heavy, ragged breathing of Arthur on the floor.
I stood thirty feet from Victor Cross. To my right, Arthur and Eleanor huddled together against a wooden pallet, their eyes wide with terror. To my left, Claire slowly emerged from behind the SUV, her pistol raised, her knuckles white with murderous intent.
Victor stared at me, his scarred face tightening as he studied my features under the harsh work lights.
“My God,” Victor murmured, his voice laced with an eerie, reverent awe. “You look just like Thomas. You have his eyes. The exact same cold, dead look he had before he ordered a hit.”
“Then you know what happens to men who betray a Sterling, Victor,” I said, my voice steady, vibrating with absolute authority.
Claire stepped forward, her face twisted in a sneer of pure hatred. “Don’t look at her, Victor! She’s a fake! A pet raised by Arthur Hayes to pretend she’s high society! She doesn't have the stomach for this world!”
“And you do, Claire?” I challenged, shifting my gaze to her. “You think hiring thugs and hiding behind a broken-down criminal makes you powerful? You let Daniel take the fall for your fraud. You let your mercenary team get slaughtered on the highway. You haven't made a single move on your own because you’re terrified that without your father’s name, you are nothing.”
“I am Arthur Hayes’s only biological child!” Claire shrieked, the composure she had clung to for years completely disintegrating into hysterical rage. “Everything he built belongs to me! You stole my childhood! You stole my parents! You stole my name!”
“Your father built a house of lies on my father’s money!” I yelled back, stepping forward, cutting the distance between us. “And your parents didn't discard you because they hated you, Claire! They discarded you because Arthur was too much of a coward to admit his sins to the world, and Eleanor was too terrified to face the monster she married!”
Arthur let out a broken, agonizing sob from the floor, burying his face against Eleanor’s shoulder.
“Shut up!” Claire screamed, raising her gun directly at my chest. “Shut up and die!”
“Claire, wait!” Victor commanded, reaching out to grab her arm. “The codes—!”
Claire didn't listen. Blinded by nineteen years of festering, psychotic jealousy, she pulled the trigger.
I dropped to my knees the exact millisecond her shoulder twitched.
The bullet whistled through the air where my head had been a fraction of a second earlier, shattering the glass of the forklift behind me.
Before Claire could realign her sights, Victor lunged forward to knock her gun away, furious that she was about to destroy his multi-million-dollar prize. “You stupid bitch, I told you to wait—!”
Claire spun on Victor with feral speed, pressing the barrel of her gun beneath Victor’s chin and pulling the trigger.
The deafening shot echoed through the warehouse. Victor Cross stiffened, his eyes rolling back, before he collapsed onto the concrete like a felled tree, dead before he hit the ground.
“No one tells me what to do anymore!” Claire screamed at the corpse, her face flecked with blood.
She whipped her weapon back toward me.
But I was already moving.
I raised my Glock with both hands, my training taking over. I didn't hesitate. I didn't flinch.
Bang. Bang.
The first round caught Claire in the right shoulder, spinning her violently around. Her gun slipped from her grasp, skittering across the wet concrete into the darkness.
The second round struck her thigh, sending her crashing down onto her knees beside the running SUV.
Claire screamed in pain, clutching her bleeding shoulder, gasping for air. She looked up at me, her eyes wide with shock and agony as I walked slowly toward her, the barrel of my gun pointed straight between her eyes.
“Emily... please...” Eleanor cried out from across the room. “Don’t do it! Don’t become like Thomas!”
I stopped three feet from Claire. The rain blew in through the open loading dock doors, misting over the blood pooling on the floor.
Claire glared up at me, trembling from shock and blood loss, but the pure venom in her amber eyes remained unquenched.
“Go on, Emily,” Claire hissed, coughing up a spatter of blood. “Pull the trigger. Show them who the real monster is. Prove that you’re Thomas Sterling’s daughter.”
I stared down at her.
I could see the entire trajectory of our ruined lives in her eyes. Two girls, both cursed by the cowardice and greed of the parents kneeling in the shadows behind us. One raised in a gilded cage of lies; the other raised in a dungeon of neglect.
Slowly, deliberately, I lowered the hammer of my Glock and clicked the safety back on.
“No,” I said, my voice cold and hollow. “Death is too easy for you, Claire. You wanted the world to see you? You wanted visibility?”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone, tossing it onto the concrete beside her bleeding hand. The screen was active, connected directly to the emergency dispatch recording line and the lead investigator of the Southern District.
“Now the whole world will see you,” I said. “As a murderer, an extortionist, and a felon. You will spend the rest of your life in a maximum-security cell, staring at concrete walls, completely forgotten.”
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Sirens began to wail in the distance, growing louder with every passing second, echoing across the East River.
Claire let out a harrowing, broken scream of defeat, collapsing forward onto the wet floor as the first wave of police cruisers barreled onto Pier 54, their red and blue lights illuminating the dark waters like a storm of fire.
