Chapter 20 - The Edge of the Abyss

I ducked beneath the blade, feeling the cold steel slice through the shoulder of my jacket, drawing a thin line of burning heat across my skin.

Arthur lunged again, but I grabbed his arm, using his own momentum to twist him around and slam him face-first into the concrete wall. "You will never touch my son!" I screamed into his ear, driving my elbow brutally into his ribs.

Arthur gasped, his knees buckling, but he managed to spin around, his blade still raised, backing toward the open terrace that led out over the stormy cliffs.

Outside, the storm had reached its terrifying peak. Waves sixty feet high slammed violently against the jagged black rocks fifty feet below our coastal terrace. The iron railing had been twisted and torn away by the shockwave of the earlier explosions.

Arthur stood on the precipice, the torrential rain drenching his face, his knife trembling in his hand.

"Come then, Clara!" Arthur screamed over the howling gale, blood dripping from his nose. "Come and finish it! Or watch me take you over the edge with me!"

Footsteps pounded behind us. Julian burst through the smoke, blood covering the side of his face, his gun drawn.

"Arthur! Drop the weapon!" Julian shouted, moving between Arthur and the shelter where Leo remained hidden.

Arthur looked at Julian, then back at me. A chilling, demonic smile spread across the patriarch's weathered lips.

"Dominic was weak. Brooke was stupid. But you, Julian... you threw away your family's honorable name to protect this woman and a bastard boy who carries my blood." Arthur slowly reached inside his coat with his left hand.

Julian’s eyes narrowed in panic. "Clara, get down! He has a detonator!"

Time seemed to slow to a terrifying crawl.

The ocean surged violently below.

Leo’s tiny voice cried out from the darkness of the shelter: "MOMMY!"

Arthur’s thumb hovered over the red toggle switch of a military-grade demolition device concealed inside his trench coat—wired directly to the structural supports of the cliffside foundation beneath our feet.

"If the Sterling dynasty drowns," Arthur whispered with cold, triumphant madness, "we all drown together."

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I lunged forward toward the detonator. Julian fired.

A blinding flash of lightning split the black sky, and the deafening crack of a gunshot was swallowed whole by the roar of the collapsing cliffside.