Chapter 38 - Traitor in the Blood
Above us, the ceiling shuddered as an explosion ripped through the upper floors of Cypress Hollow. Smoke began to curl down the wooden cellar stairs, carrying the sharp, chemical stench of thermite.
"Move!" Vance commanded, keeping his weapon trained on Thomas Campbell while shielding Madison and me. "Lead the way, old man. Any wrong moves, and you won't make it to the marsh."
Thomas didn't flinch. He turned sharply and navigated the damp, winding brick tunnel with the ease of someone who had known its secrets for decades. We emerged into the dense, humid embrace of the bayou, beneath the veil of weeping willows where a flat-bottomed swamp skiff sat concealed under branches of Spanish moss.
We piled in. Thomas engaged a whisper-quiet electric outboard motor, gliding us silently into the dark, reflective waters of the swamp just as a massive wall of orange flame devoured the upper floors of the plantation behind us.
The reflection of Cypress Hollow burning danced across Chloe’s wide, terrified eyes. I held her against my chest, singing a quiet, breathless lullaby into her hair until her small shudders subsided.
"Who were those men, Thomas?" I demanded, staring at the old man who claimed to be my uncle. "And why did Arthur fake his death thirty years ago, leaving my mother and us to be destroyed by the syndicate?"
Thomas kept his hand on the motor's tiller, his gaze fixed on the dark water ahead. "Arthur didn't fake his death to abandon you, Rachel. He faked his death because he discovered the most monstrous truth of all: the head of the Iris syndicate was not a foreign cartel, nor an offshore consortium."
Thomas turned his silver gaze toward Vance, whose expression tightened like coiled steel.
"The founder of the syndicate was Vance's grandfather, Marcus Sterling," Thomas said, each word landing like a hammer blow. "And your mother... your mother was Marcus's willing partner."
The air left my lungs in an agonizing gasp. Madison let out a sharp cry, dropping her hands to her face.
"That's a lie," Madison choked out. "Mom hated the Sterlings! She warned us about them!"
"She warned you because she wanted Marcus's empire for herself," Thomas countered coldly. "Your mother staged the crash on the bridge. She meant to kill Arthur that night to claim his shipping licenses and funnel them into the offshore trusts. Arthur survived with half his body burned, pulled from the river by local fishermen. He has lived as a ghost for thirty years, waiting for the moment when the bloodline could finally break the chain."
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I turned to look at Vance. In the dim glow of the moonlight on the bayou, his face was pale, his jaw clenched so tight the tendons stood out against his neck.
"Did you know this, Vance?" I asked, my voice barely audible above the hum of the motor. "Did you know your family and my mother were the architect of our nightmare?"
