By attempting to steal my home and murder me, the Mercer family had triggered a clause that transferred their entire company into my hands.
Not Julian’s failed version of it.
The original corporation.
Its patents.
Its land.
Its remaining international holdings.
Everything.
But before I could absorb it, my phone rang.
Marian’s name appeared on the screen.
I answered.
Her voice was tense.
“Vivian, Julian has escaped custody.”
A crash sounded inside the house.
Then the lights went out.
In the darkness, Julian’s voice came from behind me.
“None of you are leaving with my company.”
PART 8 — THE WOMAN THEY TRIED TO ERASE
A hand closed around my throat.
Cold metal pressed beneath my jaw.
Celeste screamed.
Adrian lunged forward, but Julian dragged me backward against his chest.
“Move and she dies.”
Emergency lights flickered on inside the house, staining the terrace in dim red.
Julian’s face reflected in the glass doors.
Sweat.
Blood.
Desperation.
He held a pistol in one hand and a small black device in the other.
A detonator.
Adrian saw it.
His expression hardened.
“What did you do?”
Julian smiled.
“The vault was built under the oldest gas line in the house. My grandfather showed my father where the shutoff was.”
“You’ll kill yourself too,” I said.
“I don’t need to survive. I just need all of you to disappear.”
He had escaped during a hospital transfer after claiming chest pain. An accomplice had left the weapon and device in a restroom ceiling.
That accomplice, we later learned, was Conrad Pike.
The creditor Julian believed he had bribed.
The same man who had quietly sold the debt to me.
Julian backed us toward the open French doors.
“You ruined everything, Vivian.”
“No,” I whispered. “I revealed it.”
His arm tightened.
“You were supposed to sign the papers.”
“And then drink poisoned tea?”
“You always made everything difficult.”
The absurdity of the sentence nearly made me laugh.
To Julian, my survival was an inconvenience.
My intelligence was betrayal.
My refusal to die quietly was cruelty.
He raised the detonator.
Adrian stepped forward.
“Take me instead.”
Julian’s smile widened.
“You’ve been dead for twenty-three years. You’re worthless.”
The word hung in the air.
Worthless.
Useless.
That was how men like Julian understood people. Not by love. Not by loyalty. Only by utility.
I looked at the black device in his hand.
Then at the tiny green light on its side.
Steady.
Not blinking.
A memory surfaced.
Three months earlier, Julian had complained that the company’s prototype remote switches required two-step activation. The light remained steady until the safety latch was released.
He had only one free hand.
The latch was still locked.
The detonator was not armed.
Julian was bluffing.
I let my body go limp.
The sudden weight startled him.
His grip shifted.
I drove my heel down onto his foot and slammed the back of my head into his nose.
Bone cracked.
The gun fired.
Glass exploded beside us.
Adrian struck Julian’s wrist. Celeste pulled me away. The pistol skidded across the terrace.
Julian scrambled for it.
Before he reached it, another figure stepped from the dark kitchen.
Elena.
She wore police-issued clothing beneath a borrowed coat. A tracking band circled her ankle. She had been released temporarily to help investigators locate documents hidden in the house.
She picked up the gun.
Julian froze.
“Elena,” he said softly. “Give it to me.”
Her hands shook.
