Marcus Cooper bared his teeth in a cold, terrifying line of white bone:
“…you were going to beat your wife’s unconscious body with this seven-iron in the garage.”
“You were going to load her into the trunk of your car, drive her down to the commercial bus terminal in the city, and dump her on an icy bench in the snow to die of internal thoracic hemorrhage.”
“You were going to tell the Fairfax County police that she had an emotional postpartum breakdown and walked out into the blizzard.”
“And while she lay dying in the freezing dark…”
Cooper pointed his gold pen straight at Julian’s heart:
“…you and Victoria Sterling were going to file the emergency survivorship petition at nine o’clock tomorrow morning, claiming sole fee-simple title to Conduit Ten for your private consortium in Zurich.”
***
CHAPTER 5: THE RECKONING IN CHAINS
Sylvia Vance let out an un-human, glass-shattering shriek from the bottom of her lungs:
*“NOOOOOOOOOOO!”*
The sixty-two-year-old matriarch did not look like a high-society hostess now.
She lunged across the ruined walnut table, her manicured hands hooked into claws aimed directly at my throat:
“YOU PENNILESS BITCH! I WAS BRINGING MY SON INTO THE BILLIONAIRE CLASS! YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE AN OBEDIENT LITTLE HOUSEWIFE! YOU RUINED OUR FAMILY!”
*CLACK.*
Two SOG tactical operators did not draw their sidearms.
The two-hundred-and-twenty-pound tactical operators stepped forward in synchronized, terrifying mechanical precision:
Their gloved hands caught Sylvia Vance by the lapels of her cream St. John jacket, spun her frame ninety degrees against the dining table, and drove her face down onto the porcelain platter with three hundred pounds of linear kinetic leverage:
*SLAM.*
Her cheek struck the cold turkey bones, her south-sea pearls snapping loose and scattering eighty-four white spheres across the floorboards like hail:
*patter-patter-patter.*
A pair of heavy-duty, double-locking, high-security stainless-steel military transport restraints ratcheted around Sylvia Vance’s wrists with two sharp, definitive snaps that sounded like twin rifle shots across the silent room:
*SNAP.*
A second set of chains clamped around her ankles—the identical stainless-steel irons used for capital traitors at the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth.
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Beside her, two federal marshals pinned Julian against the wall, heavy transport irons slamming shut around his wrists:
*SNAP-CLINK.*
Julian wept into the plaster, his lavender Ralph Lauren shirt tearing down the back seam, his tears, snot, and spit running down his chin onto his wingtip shoes:
“Clara… Clara, please!” Julian sobbed, his voice cracking into that wet, pathetic, sniveling rattle of an emperor whose forty-year kingdom had just been melted down into scrap iron:
“Think of Maya! Think of our baby! We have a daughter together! You can’t let them take her father to a federal prison in chains! I love you! Victoria meant nothing to me! It was just business! My mother forced me to do it!”
I walked down the length of the dining table.
My hand-welted leather shoes made that clean, measured *tack… tack… tack* against the heart-pine:
*tack… tack… tack.*
I stopped two inches from the man who had kissed my forehead six days ago while planning my murder.
I did not strike his cheek.
I did not spit on his head.
I reached down to his left hand, unclasped the platinum wedding band from his ring finger—the ring I had placed on his finger two years ago in the Great Falls chapel:
*SLIP.*
I dropped the five-thousand-dollar platinum band into the puddle of spilled gravy and cold grease beneath his broken nose:
*TINK.*
“You told Victoria on Tuesday afternoon, Julian, that you hated me,” Clara Mercer whispered softly.
Every syllable fell like an un-appealable decree that sealed two years of domestic deceit into solid rock forever:
“You said you barely touched me anymore.”
“You said you just wanted me to leave you alone.”
I leaned down until my clear slate-gray eyes filled his entire field of vision:
“Your wish is granted, Julian.”
“You will be left alone.”
“In an eight-by-ten subterranean concrete cell at ADX Florence for the next thirty-five years.”
