Chapter 8 - THE SHOWDOWN ON THE STAIRS
"Voss," I said, my voice dangerously low, my gun pointed straight up at his chest. "You stepped into my house. You threatened my daughters. You are not walking off this estate alive."
Voss chuckled, a dry, rattling sound. "I didn't come here to threaten your daughters, Ethan. I came here for the flash drive. Madeline was a fool. She thought she could take down my entire Gulf operation with a few recorded phone calls and ledger extracts. And Patricia..." Voss sneered, glancing toward the rear hallway. "Patricia was an even bigger fool. She thought she was going to be the new queen of the Whitaker estate. She didn't realize that once the evidence was secured, she was going to have a fatal car accident of her own."
My heart hammered against my ribs. I kept my eyes locked on Voss, but my ears were listening to the subtle sounds of the house.
From the far end of the upper corridor, near the service staircase, I heard a quiet, metallic CLICK.
Clara had made it to the playroom. She had Avery. She was moving them toward the basement.
I needed to buy them sixty seconds. Just sixty seconds to clear the stairs and enter the wine cellar.
"Why Madeline?" I asked, forcing myself to speak, keeping Voss's attention squarely on me. "She had nothing to do with our business disputes. She was innocent, Lionel."
"Innocent?" Voss scoffed, leaning against the balcony railing. "She was going to divorce you, Ethan! She was going to take half your assets, half your port shares, and move your kids to Oregon! If those port shares went into a blind probate trust during a messy divorce, my buyout plan was dead in the water. Patricia came to me with a solution. We staged the crash. We paid off the truck driver's family. It was clean. It was perfect. Until your saintly little housekeeper decided to go playing repairman on a stuffed rabbit."
The rage inside me didn't make me hot; it made me absolute zero. Every drop of blood in my veins turned to liquid ice.
"She wasn't just a housekeeper," I said quietly, taking a slow step toward the base of the grand curved staircase. "She was the only person in this house who was actually paying attention."
Voss's eyes narrowed. "Miller, finish him."
Miller raised the tactical shotgun, leveling it at my head.
Before he could pull the trigger, a sharp, piercing shriek rang out from the pantry hallway behind me.
Patricia had managed to slide the broom handle free. She burst out into the foyer, her eyes wild, blood smeared across her cream-colored suit, holding a heavy brass candlestick she had grabbed from the dining room.
"LIONEL, YOU LIAR!" Patricia screamed, lunging not at me, but toward the staircase, her voice echoing hysterically. "YOU PROMISED ME TWENTY PERCENT! YOU PROMISED WE WERE PARTNERS!"
Miller shifted his balance, his eyes flicking for a fraction of a second toward the screaming woman sprinting across the foyer floor.
That fraction of a second was all I needed.
I raised my Sig Sauer and fired three rounds in rapid succession.
THUMP-THUMP-THUMP.
The high-caliber rounds caught Miller in the neck and upper chest. The massive man crashed backward, his tactical shotgun slipping from his grip, tumbling over the glass-littered marble floor.
Voss gasped, pulling his suppressed pistol, firing wildly down into the foyer.
PUB-PUB-PUB.
One bullet struck Patricia in the chest as she reached the bottom stair. She let out a wet, gasp-filled breath and collapsed onto the floor, her eyes staring blankly up at the crystal chandelier she had spent five years trying to own.
Another bullet caught me in the side, tearing through my leather jacket and grazing my ribs like a branding iron.
The pain was a white-hot flash, but I didn't slow down. I sprinted up the grand curved staircase, charging through the spray of Voss's bullets like a demon rising from hell.
Voss panicked. He emptied his magazine, the bullets whistling past my ears, embedding themselves into the oak paneling of the walls.
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He turned to run toward the rear exit of the second floor, but I cleared the top of the stairs in three massive strides, lunged forward, and tackled him around the waist.
We crashed through the heavy double doors of my private study, rolling across the Persian rug in a tangle of limbs, fists, and shattered furniture.
