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 85 / 120

Chapter 85 - The Alpine Trap

The snapped nib skittered across the polished wood, leaking dark black ink across the immaculate vellum document.

Madame Geneviève de la Tour did not flinch, but the temperature in the room plummeted instantly. The two armed guards stationed by the tapestries raised their submachine guns, the metallic click of chambering rounds echoing through the limestone rafters.

"You are theatrical, Maya," Geneviève said, her voice dropping to a deadly whisper. "Just like your mother. And look where it brought her—drugged in a private wing, babbling to the curtains about garden roses."

"My mother survived you," I spat, rising from the chair and standing at my full height. "And I am not here to inherit Arthur's cage. You didn't invite me here because you wanted a partner, Madame. You invited me because Arthur was smart enough to hide one specific ledger that you couldn't crack—the master ledger of the Helvetia Accord’s domestic payoffs."

Geneviève’s jaw tightened—just a fraction of a millimeter, but it was enough. I had hit the nerve.

"Julian Harrow didn't just dump Arthur's accounts," I continued, backing slowly toward Liam. "He mirrored the routing keys to the Swiss Federal Banking Commission twenty minutes before we landed in Zurich. You have seventy-two hours before every magistrate in Switzerland realizes that the Sovereign Council has been laundering blood money through the cantonal state banks."

"Kill them," Geneviève said flatly to the guards, turning her back to the table. "Make it look like an armed robbery by local separatists. The local police will not investigate."

Before the guards could level their muzzles, Liam struck.

He grabbed the heavy silver champagne bucket from the side console and hurled it violently at the nearest guard. The freezing ice and heavy metal struck the man full in the chest, knocking him off balance as his weapon discharged into the ceiling, raining pulverized plaster down upon the room.

Liam lunged forward, catching the second guard by the wrist, pivoting his weight with devastating tactical efficiency. The guard’s arm snapped with an audible pop, his weapon falling into Liam's waiting hand.

"Down!" Liam roared, grabbing my arm and pulling me behind the thick marble mantle as the first guard recovered, spraying high-caliber automatic fire across the dining room. Mirrors shattered, century-old tapestries shredded into ribbons, and antique china exploded into clouds of white dust.

"We have to reach the garden terrace!" I yelled over the deafening clatter of gunfire. "Julian said the service tunnel connects to the funicular railway!"