Chapter 17 - The Fire at the Estate
The snowstorm intensified outside, rattling the floor-to-ceiling windows of the Fifth Avenue penthouse. Inside, the air was suffocating.
"Alive?" Gabriel’s voice was a terrifying mix of fury and disbelief. "I identified her car! I attended her closed-casket funeral in St. Moritz! Her father buried her!"
David remained stiff as a board. "Sir, the records from the Swiss cantonal police were sealed twenty-four hours after the crash. We assumed it was due to her family’s privacy. But the federal marshals tracking Julian’s wire trails just confirmed: Helena Montgomery’s passport was scanned at JFK three days ago."
Khloe stood completely frozen. Her mind was reeling. Every time she believed she had secured her sanctuary, another layer of deception emerged from the dark history of the Vance dynasty.
"Why was Julian being paid five million dollars from an account tied to your dead fiancée, Gabriel?" Khloe asked, her voice deadly quiet, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. "And why did Julian have access to it *after* our daughter was born?"
Gabriel stepped toward her, his eyes wild with desperation. "Khloe, you have to believe me. Helena was my youth. We were engaged ten years ago because our fathers arranged it. When she died—or when I *thought* she died—I cut all ties with her family. I didn't love her. I never loved anyone until I met you."
"Then who paid Julian?" Khloe demanded, tears of frustration stinging her eyes. "Who gave him the money to keep fighting me? Who wanted to tear us apart?"
Before Gabriel could answer, the penthouse’s master alarm system wailed—a high-pitched, piercing siren that instantly triggered the automated steel shutters over the terrace doors.
The lights flickered and died, plunging the study into darkness, illuminated only by the crimson glow of the emergency backup strips.
"Breach at the upstate estate!" David yelled into his radio, pulling his sidearm. "All units, report! Where is the intrusion?"
Gabriel’s private phone rang. The caller ID flashed: *UNKNOWN CALLER*.
Gabriel answered on speakerphone, holding Khloe behind him instinctively.
"Gabriel," a smooth, sultry, aristocratic voice purred through the line. The accent was refined, European, dripping with effortless malice. "It’s been a long time, darling."
Gabriel’s knuckles turned white on the phone. "Helena."
A low, mocking laugh echoed over the speaker. "Did you really think your father would let you inherit the Vance empire without my family’s blessing? You thought you could marry a ruined little divorcee, crown her with my family’s heirlooms, and play happy family in Manhattan?"
"Where are you?" Gabriel growled, his voice vibrating with lethal intent.
"I’m looking at your beautiful country house in Bedford," Helena replied casually. "Or rather, what’s left of it."
On Gabriel’s desk, the security monitors flickered back to life on backup battery power. The live feed showed the historic Vance upstate compound—the five-hundred-acre estate where Gabriel had planned to host their formal wedding this spring.
Flames were roaring into the night sky. The main house was engulfed in an inferno, black smoke billowing into the blizzard.
Khloe gasped, clapping a hand over her mouth.
"Julian Duval was useful," Helena’s voice continued, cold and playful. "He kept your little wife busy while I consolidated the remaining European shares Victoria was too stupid to protect. Julian thought he was getting ten million to run to South America. Instead, he gave me everything I needed to reclaim what is legally mine."
"If you come anywhere near Khloe or my daughter," Gabriel roared, "I will hunt you to the ends of the earth and put you in the ground myself!"
"Oh, Gabriel," Helena laughed, the sound sending chills down Khloe’s spine. "I don't need to come near you. Look outside your window."
Gabriel and Khloe rushed to the bulletproof glass of the Fifth Avenue penthouse.
Across the street, on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum where Khloe had triumphed three weeks ago, a sleek black Maybach was parked under the streetlamp. Standing beside the open rear door was a woman dressed in a white fur coat, holding an ivory umbrella against the falling snow.
The woman looked up directly toward the penthouse, lifted a gloved hand, and waved.
Then she slipped into the car, and the Maybach vanished into the blizzard.
Gabriel turned to David, his eyes blazing with madness. "Lock down this building. Deploy thirty men to the perimeter. Nobody enters. Nobody leaves."
He turned back to Khloe. Khloe was standing over Elena’s bassinet, her face pale, but her eyes burning with an unbreakable maternal fury.
"She burned our home," Khloe whispered, looking up at Gabriel. "She gave Julian the money to terrorize me. She thinks she’s a ghost come back to claim her kingdom."
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Khloe picked up her sleeping daughter, holding her close against her heart.
"Gabriel," Khloe said, her voice dropping into a register of cold, terrifying certainty. "I don't care if she came back from the dead. She made a mistake coming after my family. Let's finish this."
