Chapter 14 - The Breaking Point
"We both did," Clara's voice cut through the heavy, freezing air like a razor blade.
My head snapped toward her in sheer disbelief. "Clara—"
"No, Thomas," she interrupted, her voice entirely steady, stripped of all fear. She stood up, leaning over the obsidian table until she was face-to-face with Marcus Sterling. "You want the truth? Julian came into our home with a gun and a bottle of synthesized neurotoxin, intending to wipe out our entire family to cover up his corporate embezzlement. In the struggle, the vial shattered against his chest. He ingested it because of his own violent greed."
Marcus stared at her for a long, agonizing moment, his expression unreadable. Then, a slow, malicious smile spread across his face.
"Bravo, Mrs. Vance," Marcus purred, leaning back in his chair. "A compelling narrative of self-defense. Unfortunately, the local coroner's report filed under Julian's payroll didn't see it quite that way. But let's move on to round two, shall we?"
He reached out and picked up the heavy silver revolver from the table. With a slow, deliberate motion, he spun the cylinder. The metallic *click-clack-click* echoed like a death knell through the silent lodge.
"Round two is about secrets," Marcus said, his eyes glittering with sadistic glee. "Julian spent the last three years of his life embezzling fifty million dollars from the Sterling Foundation and hiding it in an unrecoverable digital wallet. The police never found the encryption key. But I know for a fact that before he died at your Christmas dinner, he handed that key to someone in this room."
Marcus pointed the barrel of the revolver casually toward me. "Where is the encryption key, Thomas? Did you swallow it along with your Christmas turkey?"
I stared down at the polished steel barrel of the gun. The truth was, Julian hadn't given me an encryption key. But during the chaotic aftermath of the poisoning, as I was searching Julian's pockets for a phone to call 911, I had found a small flash drive tucked inside his inner jacket lining—a flash drive I had subsequently hidden inside the floorboards of our old house before we abandoned it.
If I told Marcus about the flash drive, he would take the fifty million dollars, wipe out our financial leverage, and execute us anyway. If I lied, and he pulled the trigger...
"I don't know what you're talking about," I said, my voice completely level. "Julian didn't give me anything."
Marcus stared at me, searching my face for any micro-expression of deceit. For five agonizing seconds, the only sound was the howling of the wind outside the reinforced glass.
Slowly, Marcus shifted the gun, pointed it directly at Clara's chest, and pulled the trigger.
*Click.*
An empty chamber.
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Clara didn't even flinch. She simply stared back at him with pure, unadulterated hatred.
"You're a remarkably stubborn man, Thomas," Marcus whispered, his smile fading into a mask of pure coldness. "Let's see how stubborn you are when we reach round three."
