CHAPTER 6: THE RECKONING ON THE MARBLE
Genevieve began to hyperventilate.
Her breath came in ragged, bubbling shrieks as she pressed her forehead against the base of the banister, her fingers clawing at the wool runner:
“Madeline! Please! I was only doing what Eleanor told me! She promised me two million dollars! She told me you were just an orphan from a bakery! I didn’t mean to hurt Paisley! I didn’t know he was going to whip her! I swear to God, I didn’t know!”
I walked down the final two steps.
My flour-dusted apron brushed against Genevieve’s bare, shivering shoulder.
I stopped two inches from Alistair’s face.
I did not draw a weapon.
I did not spit on him.
I reached into the pocket of my apron, pulled out an ancient, tarnished silver half-dollar—the coin my grandfather had given me on the day he died, the coin I had kept in my pocket for nine years to remind myself of the price of bread:
*SLIP.*
I dropped the heavy silver coin onto the floorboards directly between Alistair’s trembling thumbs:
*CLINK.*
“You shouted at me forty minutes ago, Alistair,” Madeline Pembroke whispered softly.
Every syllable was twenty decibels of compressed, unyielding polar diamond:
“You told me to pay ten thousand dollars for her dress or get out of your house.”
I leaned down until my clear slate-gray eyes filled his entire field of vision:
“Here is fifty cents.”
“Keep the change.”
“And get out of my daughter’s foyer.”
CLICK-CLACK.
Two tactical operators from the 75th Ranger Regiment stepped forward in seamless, terrifying mechanical precision:
Their gloved hands caught Alistair Vance by the collar of his shredded shirt, spun his six-foot frame one hundred and eighty degrees against the floor, and drove his face down onto the broken marble with three hundred pounds of linear kinetic leverage:
*SLAM.*
His cheek struck the stone, his nose breaking with a sharp, wet *crunch*, his blood pooling across his forged probate petitions:
*SNAP-SNAP.*
A pair of heavy-duty, double-locking, high-security stainless-steel military transport restraints ratcheted around Alistair Vance’s wrists with two sharp, definitive snaps that sounded like twin rifle shots across the silent hall:
*SNAP.*
A second set of chains clamped around his ankles—the identical stainless-steel irons used for capital traitors at the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth.
Beside him, two female military police operators hauled Genevieve to her feet, heavy transport irons slamming shut around her wrists despite her screaming and vomiting:
*SNAP-CLINK.*
“GET THEM OUT OF MY SIGHT,” Silas commanded.
The two operators dragged Alistair Vance and Genevieve Vance-Moreau across the shattered marble floorboards by their armpits, their designer shoes and torn evening clothes dragging through the glass and drywall dust, leaving long, jagged, gray streaks across the floor as they were marched toward the armored tactical BearCats waiting on the crushed lawn:
*SCREEECH-ROAR-PANT.*
The heavy roar of the Black Hawk engines flared outside as the transport vehicles accelerated down the private driveway, their sirens screaming into the desert night.
The foyer returned to silence.
The only sound left was the sixty-cycle hum of Tristan’s Toughbook cooling fans, the steady, rhythmic breathing of my brothers, and the distant, sweet sound of Paisley’s sleeping breath drifting from the upstairs bedroom.
***
