Chapter 12 - The Price of Blood
Ethan was dragged up the rusted iron stairs of the warehouse office, his boots leaving trails of mud across the linoleum. The guards threw him to the floor before Victoria's desk.
"Ethan!" Elena cried out, straining against the heavy ropes binding her to the wooden chair. Her face was bruised, her blouse torn, but she was alive.
Ethan pushed himself up onto his knees, spitting blood from his mouth. He ignored the pain racking his body and looked straight at Victoria. "Where is Lily?"
Victoria stood behind the desk, her face twisted in rage. She threw her satellite phone onto the floor, shattering it into pieces. "Mercer didn't check in. The biometric terminal at Pierce Tower went dark. You sabotaged the vault, didn't you?"
"Where is my daughter?" Ethan repeated, his voice dropping into a low, terrifying growl.
Victoria walked slowly around the desk, stopping right in front of him. She reached down, grabbing Ethan by his chin, forcing him to meet her gaze. "She's in a reinforced steel locker on the loading barge outside, Ethan. Suspended directly over thirty feet of freezing water."
Ethan's breath hitched in his throat.
Victoria pointed out the rain-streaked window toward the dark dock below. A massive yellow crane held a rusted shipping container suspended twenty feet in the air above the churning bay waters.
"The winch release is connected to a mechanical timer on this desk," Victoria said, pointing to a countdown clock ticking backward from ten minutes. "If you don't give me the offshore clearance codes to the trust by the time that counter hits zero, the cable drops. The container sinks to the bottom. It takes approximately three minutes for a sealed locker to fill with water."
"She's five years old, Victoria!" Elena screamed hysterically from her chair. "She's your own blood! How can you be this evil?!"
"Our father was evil!" Victoria screamed back, her aristocratic veneer shattering into raw, unhinged fury. "He erased me! He left me to be raped and beaten in the docks of Greece while Ethan played with toy sailboats in Central Park! I don't care about blood! I care about survival!"
She picked up a tablet from the desk, shoving it into Ethan's face. "The master override code for the trust. Type it in. Right now."
Ethan stared at the screen.
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If he entered the code, the entire trust dissolved, transferring total ownership to Victoria's offshore accounts. And the moment the transfer cleared, Victoria had no reason to keep any of them alive.
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