Chapter 7 - The Bloodline Secret
My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped sledgehammer.
Julian Vance wasn't just trying to kill me. He knew Grace and Lily were my weakness—not because they were staff, but because Lily’s father had been my younger brother, Thomas, who died five years ago. Grace had kept the child’s true parentage secret to protect her from the very enemies who had destroyed Thomas.
Lily wasn't just the maid's daughter. She was my niece. My sole living blood heir.
And Celeste had figured it out before I did.
"Vincent!" I barked into my tactical communicator as I raced down the hidden staircase toward the basement level. "Thermite charge on the south foundation wall! They're targeting the vault!"
"I'm pinned in the kitchen, sir!" Vincent yelled over the deafening sound of automatic rifle fire. "Two shooters between me and the basement stairwell!"
"Hold the foyer!" I yelled back. "I'll handle the foundation!"
I hit the heavy iron door at the bottom of the basement stairs shoulder-first, bursting into the damp, stone-lined wine cellar.
The air down here was cold, smelling of ancient oak barrels and wet concrete. At the far end of the corridor, through the iron bars of the display rack, I saw the glow of a red timer digital display mounted on the thermite charge against the vault wall.
01:45... 01:44... 01:43...
Standing beside the charge was a tall man in a dark trench coat, holding an umbrella in one hand and a detonator in the other. He turned around as my flashlight beam caught him in the face.
Julian Vance.
He had aged. His hair was stark white, his face hollowed out by bitterness and disease, but his cold, reptilian eyes remained unchanged.
"Adrian," Julian smiled softly, his hand resting on the manual detonator switch. "You always were so protective of your legacy. Just like Thomas was."
"Step away from that charge, Julian," I said, raising my pistol, aligning the front sight directly between his eyes.
"If you shoot me, my thumb releases this dead-man switch," Julian said softly, gesturing to the glowing red light on his palm. "The thermite ignites instantly. The heat will reach four thousand degrees. It will melt the vault door into slag and suffocate everyone inside in twenty seconds."
My finger tightened on the trigger, but I didn't squeeze.
"What do you want?" I demanded, my chest heaving.
"I want what was promised to my family," Julian hissed, his aristocratic composure cracking, revealing the wild, desperate madness underneath. "Your father stole the Moretti trust! He altered the deeds! He left me with nothing while you sat in this palace!"
"My father paid your gambling debts for ten years!" I shouted over the sound of the rain outside. "He gave you everything until you tried to sell our family's patents to the Chinese syndicate!"
"Details!" Julian raged. "Sign the transfer of the estate over to Celeste! Hand over the master key codes! Or your little niece dies right now!"
He knew. He knew Lily was Thomas’s daughter.
Before Julian could press his thumb down on the switch, a small, quiet voice echoed from the ventilation grate right above his head.
"Mr. Julian?"
Julian blinked, instinctively looking up toward the narrow copper duct above the foundation wall.
A tiny arm reached through the grate—Lily, who had crawled through the old laundry chute inside the panic room—and dropped a heavy, copper fire-extinguisher brass nozzle straight onto Julian’s head!
CRACK!
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Julian let out a sharp cry as the heavy brass struck his temple. He stumbled backward, his hand loosening from the dead-man switch.
I didn't hesitate. I leaped forward across the stone floor, my boots skidding against the wet flags, tackling Julian to the floor before his thumb could strike the button!
