Chapter 6 - Blood Money
Gunfire shattered the darkness.
Muzzle flashes strobed through the library like lightning, illuminating fragments of shredded paper and flying wood splinters as bullets tore into the centuries-old bookshelves.
Maya hit the floor hard, pulling the heavy steel strongbox beneath her body. In the pitch black, she couldn't see anything, but she felt a strong, calloused hand grab her collar, hauling her violently behind the thick oak desk.
“Stay down!” Marcus’s voice hissed in her ear.
A bullet slammed into the desktop inches above their heads, sending jagged shards of varnished wood raining down on their backs.
“They have night-vision scopes!” Maya gasped, tasting copper and dust.
“They have tactical gear, but they don't know the house,” Marcus replied calmly, though his breathing was heavy. He reached into his coat and produced a small, blinding tactical strobe light, clicking it on and hurling it across the room toward the far corner.
The strobe flashed at fifty cycles per second, instantly overwhelming the guards’ night-vision goggles. Shouts of pain and curses erupted as the guards tore their headsets off, momentarily blinded by the disorienting, strobing white light.
“Move!” Marcus commanded, grabbing Maya’s hand.
He pulled her not toward the main exit, but toward the grand fireplace behind the desk. Marcus reached up inside the soot-covered chimney, tripping a hidden iron lever. With a dull scrape, the decorative cast-iron fireback swung inward, revealing an emergency escape passage built during the Prohibition era.
Marcus shoved Maya through the opening, grabbed the steel box, and squeezed in behind her, kicking the cast-iron plate shut just as a hail of bullets peppered the brick hearth.
The passage was narrow, steep, and completely dark. They slid and scrambled down a concrete chute that emptied out into the underground drainage tunnels beneath the estate’s outer terrace.
Maya stumbled onto the damp gravel of the drainage canal, cold rain instantly soaking through her shirt. Behind them, alarms were wailing across the grounds—high-pitched, piercing sirens that signaled a total lockdown.
“Can you run?” Marcus asked, his voice tight.
Maya wiped rain and grime from her forehead, clutching the iron box tightly against her chest. “I ran track on scholarship before I had to drop out to pay my father’s medical bills. I can outrun you, lawyer.”
The ghost of a smile crossed Marcus’s wet face. “Prove it.”
They broke into a sprint through the estate’s outer woods, keeping beneath the thick canopy of pines to avoid the sweeping searchlights from the main gate. Within ten minutes, they reached a secluded maintenance access road behind the property boundary. Parked beneath an overgrown weeping willow was an unassuming, dark grey Audi sedan.
Marcus hit the key fob, unlocked the doors, and pushed Maya into the passenger seat before throwing the strongbox into the back. He leaped behind the wheel, gunned the engine, and tore out onto the rural highway with the headlights turned completely off until they hit the main turnpike.
Maya slumped against the leather seat, her chest heaving, the adrenaline slowly draining and leaving a deep, trembling exhaustion in its wake. She looked down at her hands—scraped, bleeding, and stained with soot.
“Where are we going?” she asked, watching the rain streak across the windshield as Marcus finally switched on the dim running lights.
“My private townhouse in Brooklyn,” Marcus said, his eyes glued to the rearview mirror, checking for pursuit. “It’s off the grid. No Vance corporate deeds, no paper trail. Veronica won’t look for us there until morning.”
“What about Eleanor?” Maya asked, panic rising in her throat. “We left her with them! Veronica will kill her!”
“Veronica won’t touch Eleanor tonight,” Marcus said coldly. “Eleanor is Veronica’s only legal shield. The board meeting is at nine o'clock tomorrow morning at Vance Tower in Manhattan. Veronica needs Eleanor alive to present her power-of-attorney documents. If Eleanor dies before the board convenes, the company shares are frozen automatically by state regulatory statute.”
“So we have until nine tomorrow,” Maya said, looking out into the storm.
“No,” Marcus corrected, his voice dropping into a grave, ominous tone. “We have until eight. Because at eight o'clock, Veronica will have Dr. Harrison administer a terminal dose of paralytics to Eleanor, forge her thumbprint on the conservatorship contract, and present it to the board as Eleanor’s dying wish.”
May you like
Marcus reached over, his hand resting briefly, reassuringly over Maya’s trembling fingers. “You’re not just a maid anymore, Maya. Tomorrow morning, you walk into that boardroom as the rightful owner of an empire. And I’m going to make sure you get your throne.”
***
