I caught my husband kissing my older sister in my mother’s kitchen while twenty people celebrated my father’s sixty-fifth birthday in the next room. / Chapter 48 / 120

Chapter 48 - The Fall of the Prodigal

The red emergency strobes flared to life, painting the penthouse in pulsing, blood-colored shadows. Smoke from the weapon discharges hung thick in the air.

Liam was engaged in brutal, hand-to-hand combat with Margarethe’s two elite guards near the doorway, using bone-snapping efficiency to neutralize them before they could rearm.

I ran across the ruined salon toward the glass conservatory leading to the private helipad.

Richard was there, struggling with the jammed latch of the reinforced glass door, blood trickling down his temple where shattered crystal had cut him. He heard my heels against the marble and spun around, brandishing a small silver revolver he had concealed in his boot.

"Stay back, Maya!" he screamed, his hands shaking so violently the gun barrel wobbled. "I swear to God, I'll pull this trigger! I won't go to prison! I gave up everything for this!"

"You gave up nothing, Richard!" I yelled over the howl of the Alpine wind whistling through the shattered windows. "You stole from my father! You poisoned my sister's mind! You looked me in the eye every morning and told me you loved me while you were planning to leave me penniless!"

"Because you were boring!" Richard shrieked, his face contorting into an ugly, pathetic snarl. "You wanted a quiet life on the cliff! You wanted family dinners and Sunday mornings! I wanted power! Eleanor understood that! She looked at me like I was a king!"

"Eleanor was sick, and you exploited her!" I stepped forward, refusing to back down, refusing to show fear to the monster who had terrorized my life. "Shoot me, Richard. Do it. Because if you don't, you spend the next thirty years rotting in a supermax facility with nothing but your own pathetic reflection to keep you company."

He cocked the hammer, his knuckles turning white. Tears of rage and cowardice spilled over his cheeks. "Goodbye, Maya—"

*Crack!*

A shot echoed, but it didn't come from Richard’s gun.

Richard gasped, his eyes bulging as a bullet pierced through his right shoulder from behind me. The revolver clattered to the marble floor.

Standing behind me was Eleanor.

She stood in a borrowed black overcoat, her hands clasped around a smoking security pistol she had picked up from the hallway. Her face was drenched in tears, but her hands were entirely, immovably steady.

"Get away from my sister, Richard," Eleanor whispered.

Richard collapsed against the glass door, clutching his bleeding shoulder, staring in horror at the sister he had seduced and broken. "Eleanor... baby, please... you love me..."

Eleanor walked forward, kicked his revolver across the slick floor toward Liam, and looked down at Richard with pure, unadulterated disgust.