CHAPTER 6: THE BREACH AT THE DOUBLE DOORS
*CLANG-BANG.*
The heavy galvanized iron doors of the workshop did not slide open on their rollers.
They were kicked inward with concussive, violent force, the six-inch steel latch shearing clean off the fir jamb with a deafening screech of torn metal:
*CRASH-ROAR-SHATTER.*
Through the doorway, framed against the cold blue moonlight of the orchard…
Came Derek.
He was wearing unbuttoned flannel trousers, an expensive gray cashmere zip-sweater from Nordstrom, and work boots without socks. In his right hand, he held a black, semi-automatic **Glock 19**, the slide racked back, the weapon trembling in his fist with that chaotic, adrenaline-soaked fury of a cornered addict whose stash has just been discovered:
“STEP AWAY FROM THE DRILL!” Derek screamed, his voice cracking into that high, unhinged, feral pitch that had terrorized my mother for six months:
“DAD! GET AWAY FROM THAT HATCH! JULIAN, YOU BASTARD! I KNEW YOU WERE SNOOPING AROUND MY YARD!”
Beside Derek stepped into the workshop…
**Veronica Vance-Vega**.
Thirty-four years old.
Chief Justice Arthur Vance’s youngest granddaughter from his high-society San Francisco marriage.
Derek’s wife.
My half-cousin.
She was stunning in that cold, manicured, architectural way that sixty million dollars of private schooling and European finishing academies buys: razor-sharp cheekbones, platinum-blonde hair swept into an immaculate, un-mussed chignon, wearing an ivory silk dressing gown over black designer leggings, holding an unsealed, four-hundred-page leather litigation brief bound with dark-crimson silk ribbon.
In her manicured left hand, she held an open satellite encrypted transceiver connected directly to a private Swiss banking terminal in Zurich:
`TRANSFER AMOUNT: $400,000,000.00 USD`
`ORIGIN: THE VALKYRIE CONSORTIUM // ZURICH`
`BENEFICIARY: APEX ASSET MANAGEMENT // VADUZ`
`STATUS: SYNCHRONIZED // AWAITING FINAL NOTARIAL EXTRACTION`
“Put the gun down, Derek,” Veronica commanded softly, her voice that deep, cultivated velvet cello that had charmed seventy corporate loan committees:
“Your brother isn’t going to shoot anyone.”
“He’s a corporate lawyer from Chicago. He spends seventy hours a week writing commercial leases for department stores.”
Veronica walked into the center of the workshop, her designer leather slippers making a clean, rhythmic *tack… tack… tack* across the pulverized red tiles.
She stopped four paces from the drilling rig, looking down at the exposed five-inch armor plate, then straight into my eyes:
“Hello, Julian,” Veronica purred, her red lips curving into a slow, predatory smile:
“Grandfather told me you might show up before the weekend was out.”
“He said you always were an obstinate boy. He said you inherited your mother’s vulgar, working-class sentimentality.”
She tapped the leather litigation brief with her gold Montblanc pen:
*tack.*
“I have here an **Emergency Order of Immediate Sequestration and Statutory Conservatorship**, issued four hours ago by Senior Judge Harold Vance of the California Fifth District Court of Appeal.”
“Your father and mother were declared legally incompetent at twenty-three-hundred hours last night.”
“Their physical and financial guardianship has been formally assigned to Derek and myself.”
Veronica stepped closer until the perfume of expensive French tuberose overwhelmed the smell of machine oil and walnut dust:
“You have zero standing here, Julian.”
“The four thousand dollars you wired every month was legally classified as an un-solicited family gift to Derek’s management company.”
“The house is being deeded to **The Valkyrie Holding Corp** at eight o’clock this morning.”
“And that five-inch armor plate beneath your father’s knees…?”
Veronica bared her teeth in a cold, terrifying line of porcelain:
“…contains forty-eight titanium cylinders that were purchased by our family’s defense syndicate sixty years ago.”
“Step away from the keyway, Julian.”
“Let Derek drop the diamond head.”
“Or Derek empties that fifteen-round magazine into your father’s chest, and we tell the local sheriff that Manuel attacked his daughter-in-law with an antique chisel.”
