Chapter 103 - The Sister in Chains
The Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury was cold, sterile, and smelled of industrial bleach and defeat.
I sat on one side of the scratched acrylic partition, my hands clasped tightly on the stainless steel counter. Across from me, wearing the coarse orange jumpsuit of a federal inmate awaiting sentencing, sat Eleanor.
The glamorous, polished older sister who had stolen my husband in my mother’s kitchen was gone. Her honey-blonde hair was limp and streaked with grey at the temples. Her skin was sallow, devoid of the expensive creams and cosmetic artistry she had worn like armor. But when she saw me, the ghost of her vicious smirk flickered across her lips.
"Look at you," Eleanor rasped, leaning against the counter. Her voice was raspy from months of screaming at prison walls. "The queen of the bluff, come to gloat over the carcass."
"Arthur is alive, Eleanor," I said, cutting straight through the theater.
Her smirk vanished instantly. The color drained from her face, leaving her a shade of chalky grey that made the fluorescent lights overhead look blinding.
"You're lying," she whispered, her fingers curling into claws against the plastic partition. "I saw the autopsy summary. Madeline’s lawyer confirmed the yacht wreckage. He burned in the Mediterranean."
"A surgically altered double," I said coldly. "He used your indictment to cover his tracks. He left you here to rot with forty years of federal time while he walked away with four hundred million."
Eleanor’s chest heaved. For a moment, I thought she was going to collapse. Then, a terrible, rattling laugh tore out of her throat. It started as a chuckle and swelled into an unhinged cackle that made the guard standing by the door rest his hand on his baton.
"He did it," she gasped, tears of hysterical laughter leaking from the corners of her eyes. "The old bastard actually did it! He used us! He used Madeline, he used Julian, he used me!"
"Where is he, Eleanor?" I leaned forward, pressing my face close to the partition. "He left a countdown on the trust ledger. If it expires, he triggers a kill contract on everyone involved in the trial. That includes your defense witnesses. That includes your chance at an appeal."
Eleanor stopped laughing. Her eyes narrowed, venom flickering back into her gaze. "Why should I help you, Maya? You put me in this cage! You dismantled my life brick by brick!"
"Because Arthur was the architect of your cage, Eleanor," I said fiercely. "Who gave Julian the offshore keys to tempt him into the affair? Who whispered in your ear that you were the rightful heir to the Thorne estate while I was weak? It was Arthur. He fed you your envy. He set you on fire so he could warm his hands by the blaze."
Eleanor closed her eyes, her shoulders trembling violently. The truth was too massive, too ugly for her to deny. She knew our father. She knew the depth of his sociopathy because she had spent her entire adult life trying to mirror it.
"He has a sanctuary," Eleanor whispered after a long, agonized silence. She leaned closer to the microphone, her eyes darting toward the guard. "Not in Europe. That’s a decoy. He always said the safest place to hide an empire is where the foundation was poured."
"Where?" I demanded.
May you like
"The Iron Spire," Eleanor whispered. "The abandoned navigational lighthouse off the coast of Cuttyhunk Island. Grandfather bought the surrounding shoal in the nineteen-forties. It’s off-grid, built into the granite shelf beneath the tide line. If Arthur is anywhere on this coast... he is waiting for you in the water."
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