Chapter 11 - The Fall of the House of Sterling
As Gideon approached the terrace, Valerie took two stumbling steps backward, her high heels catching in the hem of her ivory gown. Her face was completely drained of blood, her mouth opening and closing like a fish pulled out of water.
"G-Gideon...?" she whispered, her vocal cords barely functioning.
She had spent seven years calling him a deadbeat. She had spent seven years telling the entire town that he was an uneducated runaway who had abandoned his daughter because he was too cowardly to face fatherhood.
The man walking toward her did not look like a runaway.
He looked like an ancient god of war who had crawled out of the smoke of a burning city to demand his tithe in blood.
"Gideon!" Eleanor cried, stepping forward with her hands outstretched, attempting to summon the haughty, dismissive authority she had used against me for nearly a decade. "Gideon, you stop this immediately! Look at what you've done to our property! You’ve ruined your sister-in-law's engagement party! I don't know what lies Elena told you, but—"
Gideon didn't even look at her.
As he passed Eleanor, his broad shoulder brushed against hers. The impact—though he barely shifted his weight—sent Eleanor sprawling sideways onto the stone patio, her expensive pearl necklace snapping and scattering dozens of white beads across the flagstones.
"Eleanor!" Richard roared, lunging forward to grab Gideon’s arm. "You keep your filthy enlisted hands off my wife!"
Richard’s hand never made contact.
Before the older man’s fingers could touch Gideon’s tactical vest, a shadow flashed.
Major Croft stepped into the gap, seized Richard’s wrist with a bone-crushing jiu-jitsu grip, twisted his arm behind his back, and slammed the sixty-two-year-old councilman face-first onto the hood of his own Bentley Continental parked near the terrace.
The sound of Richard’s nose breaking against the hood ornament was sharp and wet.
"Richard Vance," Croft said into the man’s ear, pressing his heavy forearm across Richard’s neck, "you are under arrest for federal obstruction of justice, witness intimidation, and conspiracy to commit civil rights violations. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say will be used against you in a federal military tribunal."
"Get off me!" Richard screamed, his voice muffled against the dented sheet metal of his luxury car. "Mayor Higgins! Bradley! Somebody shoot these bastards!"
At the edge of the crowd, Chief Bradley Sterling stood beside two of his patrolmen.
Sterling didn't move an inch. His hands were clasped tightly behind his back, his head lowered toward his boots, his face dripping with cold sweat. He had received the General’s call two days ago. He knew that if he so much as touched his holster, the two snipers stationed in the Black Hawk hovering overhead would put an armor-piercing round through his spine before his hand cleared leather.
"Bradley!" Richard shrieked, spitting blood onto the hood. "Do something, you coward!"
"He can't hear you, Councilman," General Vance said calmly, stepping up to the Bentley. "Chief Sterling was relieved of all municipal authority by the Governor’s office thirty minutes ago. He is currently waiting for his own transport to the federal detention facility in Atlanta."
Meanwhile, Gideon had stopped.
He stood two feet in front of Valerie.
He was a foot taller than her. The shadow of his massive, armored frame completely engulfed her. The smell of gun oil, cordite, and cold desert air rolled off him in waves.
Valerie began to cry—not with genuine remorse, but with the pathetic, hysterical panic of a narcissist whose castle of lies had collapsed upon her head.
"Gideon... please," she sobbed, clutching her hands against her chest. "It was an accident. You know how children are... Daphne was being disrespectful! She was screaming at Julian! I just... the bag slipped... I didn't mean to hurt her!"
Gideon looked down at her. His face was an absolute, terrifying mask of stone.
"My daughter," Gideon whispered, his voice vibrating with such low, lethal resonance that Valerie physically shrank backward, "is seven years old. She weighs forty-eight pounds."
He lifted his right hand.
Valerie flinched, letting out a sharp shriek, throwing her arms up to protect her face, expecting to be struck.
Gideon did not strike her.
He reached out with two fingers—calloused, scarred, and steady—and gently hooked them beneath the delicate silver chain around her neck.
He didn't pull immediately. He looked Valerie directly in her tear-stained eyes.
"You told her I was a coward," Gideon said softly. "You told her that nobody cares about a fatherless mistake."
"I... I was angry! Elena provoked me!"
"You swung four pounds of Italian brass into the face of a child whose father was pulling wounded Rangers out of a burning helicopter in northern Iraq," Gideon said, his voice dropping into a register that made the hairs on the back of Valerie’s neck stand up. "You took her silver locket. You let your son smash her box."
Gideon’s fingers tightened around the chain.
With a slow, deliberate movement, he lifted his hand. The delicate silver links, which had held fast against Daphne’s fragile throat, could not withstand the strength of a Tier 1 operator.
With a soft, metallic *snap*, the chain parted cleanly behind Valerie’s neck.
Gideon held the chain in his palm. He looked down at the tiny, hand-carved silver locket. It was tarnished, stained with a single speck of dried crimson that hadn't been washed away.
A single muscle in Gideon’s jaw twitched.
He closed his fist around the locket, tucking it securely into the chest pocket of his combat vest, right over his heart.
Then, he looked down at Valerie once more.
"You wanted to know what kind of man I am, Valerie?" Gideon whispered. "I am the man who protects this nation from monsters."
He turned his back on her, signaling to two female federal marshals who were standing at the edge of the terrace with heavy steel handcuffs.
"Take her," Gideon said. "Charge her with aggravated felony battery resulting in great bodily harm to a minor, hate-motivated assault, and federal civil rights deprivation under color of authority."
"No!" Valerie screamed as the marshals grabbed her arms, forcing them violently behind her back. The cold steel ratchets clicked tightly around her manicured wrists. "Daddy! Mommy! Don't let them take me! Chloe, help me!"
Her friends—the same women who had laughed and celebrated with her forty-eight hours ago—turned their backs, frantically looking away, desperately trying to blend into the crowd to save themselves from association.
"Julian!" Valerie shrieked, thrashing against the marshals' grip as her designer ivory gown was smeared with dirt and grass. "Where is my son?!"
"Your son," Major Croft announced, stepping onto the terrace with a social services supervisor in tow, "is being placed into temporary protective custody pending a full psychological and home-environment evaluation. The Vance estate is hereby seized under federal civil asset forfeiture laws."
Eleanor was crawling across the flagstones on her hands and knees, weeping hysterically, clutching at General Vance’s polished dress shoes. "Marcus! Please! We are family! Richard is your brother! How can you do this to your own blood?!"
General Vance looked down at his brother’s wife with cold, pitiless eyes.
"Richard ceased being my brother seven years ago," the General said softly, "when he told my nephew to leave his pregnant wife on the street because an enlisted soldier wasn't rich enough for the Vance name. You chose your god, Eleanor. You worshipped money, status, and cruelty. Now you can see if your money can buy you a blanket in a federal holding cell."
He signaled to the military police. "Clear the lawn. All guests are to be processed through federal identification checkpoints before leaving. Anyone with commercial or municipal ties to Richard Vance’s construction accounts is to be detained for immediate deposition."
As the five hundred guests were herded toward the identification tables like sheep, screaming, crying, and covering their faces from the military photographers documenting every individual, Gideon walked away from the chaos.
He didn't look back at the ruined marquees. He didn't look back at Richard, who was being hauled into the back of an armored transport in handcuffs, sobbing into his bruised hands.
Gideon climbed back into the front passenger seat of the lead M-ATV.
He keyed the internal tactical radio: "Echo-One to transport command. Target package neutralized. Route cleared to St. Jude Memorial. Step on it."
May you like
The massive diesel engine roared to life with a concussive growl. The armored vehicle wheeled around, tearing through the last surviving flowerbeds of the Vance estate, and sped down the driveway toward town.
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