Chapter 6 - Bloodline of Poison
The Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn was a brutal monolith of reinforced concrete and narrow, barred slit windows overlooking an industrial wasteland.
I sat on one side of a thick scratch-resistant partition in the secure visiting suite of the high-security ward. Across from me sat Victoria Bennett.
In twenty-four hours, the illusion of Victoria’s aristocratic perfection had completely disintegrated. The bespoke Chanel suit had been replaced by a coarse, oversized orange prison jumpsuit. Her expensive blowout was tangled, greasy, and pinned back haphazardly with plastic clips. Without her makeup, her face looked sunken, haggard, and ancient, the deep lines around her mouth etched with pure, bitter hatred.
She picked up the plastic telephone receiver on her side of the partition. I mirrored the motion, lifting the receiver to my ear.
"Have you come to gloat, you ungrateful little monster?" Victoria hissed, her voice crackling through the cheap speaker. "Did you enjoy watching them parade me through the courthouse like a common thief?"
"I didn't feel anything, Victoria," I answered calmly. "To feel pleasure in your downfall, I would have had to care about your opinion. And I stopped caring about that when I was twelve years old."
Victoria’s hands shook as she gripped the phone, her manicured acrylic nails chipped and broken.
"You think you’ve won because your military thugs broke down the doors?" she spat, leaning forward until her nose almost touched the glass. "Julian’s lawyers are already filing emergency habeas petitions. The estate was built on my family's social standing! Your father was a penniless engineer from Ohio before my father introduced him to the defense procurement committee! You stole Caleb's birthright!"
"Caleb's birthright?" I repeated, a cold, mocking smile touching my lips.
I reached into my blazer pocket, pulled out a high-resolution photocopy of the handwritten letter Dad had left in the vault, and pressed it flat against the reinforced glass.
Victoria’s eyes darted across the handwriting.
As she read the words—*Caleb is Julian's biological child*—the color drained completely from her face. Her pupils dilated with an agonizing, paralyzing terror that made her jaw hang slack.
"How... how did you..." she choked out, her voice dropping into a breathless gasp.
"Dad knew all along, Victoria," I said, every word hitting her like a hammer stroke. "He had DNA tests run when Caleb was two years old. He knew Caleb wasn't his. Do you know why he didn't divorce you right then and throw you into the gutter where you belonged?"
Victoria stared at me, trembling violently, unable to speak.
"Because Dad had a heart," I said, my eyes pinning her to her seat. "He looked at an innocent two-year-old child and decided that the boy shouldn't suffer for his mother's disgusting infidelity. He raised Caleb as his own. He gave him his name. He gave him access to every luxury, every privilege, every educational opportunity on earth."
A single tear of pure humiliation rolled down Victoria's hollow cheek.
"And how did you repay him, Victoria?" I asked, my voice dropping into a terrifyingly quiet whisper. "You invited your lover back into his life. You let Julian poison Dad's tea with thallium. You watched the man who shielded your shame die in agony on a hospice bed, all so you could hand his company to your lover's bastard."
"Shut up!" Victoria screamed, slamming both fists against the glass partition. "Shut up! You don't understand anything! Arthur was weak! He was obsessed with his silly honor, his patriotic nonsense, his refusal to sell foreign patents! Julian promised me real power! Julian was going to take Bennett Meridian global!"
Two corrections officers immediately grabbed Victoria’s shoulders, forcing her back down into her chair with a sharp warning.
"Julian Sterling doesn't care about you, Victoria," I continued, unaffected by her outburst. "He never did. He used you to gain access to Dad’s safe, and he used Caleb as a corporate proxy. And while you sit here waiting for his high-priced lawyers to save you, Julian is currently sitting in a subterranean federal holding cell at the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building, charged with capital espionage and conspiracy to commit murder."
Victoria shook her head in frantic, pathetic denial. "No... no, Julian has offshore assets... he has diplomatic contacts..."
"Not anymore," I said. "Last night, the DIA seized every foreign bank account tied to Vespera Global. The Department of Justice has frozen forty-two shell companies across three continents. You aren't getting bail, Victoria. Caleb isn't getting bail. You will spend the rest of your life in a federal penitentiary for the murder of Arthur Bennett."
Victoria looked down at her hands, the reality of her total, irreversible destruction finally crashing down upon her shoulders. The aristocratic facade collapsed entirely, leaving behind a broken, miserable woman drowning in the consequences of her own greed.
"What... what about Caleb?" she whimpered, her voice sounding like a broken child's. "Mara, please... he's your brother... he didn't know about the poison... I swear to God he didn't know about the thallium!"
"Caleb made his choice when he swore under oath that my medals were fake," I answered coldly. "He chose to try and destroy my life to steal Dad's legacy. Whether he faces ten years for perjury or life for conspiracy is up to the federal prosecutors. I won't lift a finger to save him."
I hung up the plastic telephone receiver.
Victoria scrambled against the glass, screaming my name, her tears smearing against the dirty plastic as the two corrections officers dragged her backward through the steel security door.
I turned my back on her and walked out into the cold, gray morning light.
Waiting for me at the curb was the black Suburban. Daniel was standing by the open passenger door, his arms crossed over his chest, his eyes tracking every movement in the surrounding streets.
"How did she take it?" Daniel asked as I approached.
"Like a coward," I replied, climbing into the vehicle. "Where are we at with Project Blackwood?"
Daniel’s face grew serious as he closed the door and slid into the seat beside me.
"We have a problem, Mara. Julian’s private mercenary cell—a group of former Eastern European special forces called the Kestrel Group—went dark two hours ago. They cleared out of their safehouse in New Jersey."
I looked at him sharply. "Their objective?"
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"Our primary research testing facility in the Adirondacks," Daniel said grimly, signaling the driver to move. "The Blackwood prototype is housed in the subterranean vault at Site B. Julian must have given a fail-safe order before his arrest: if they can't own the tech... they burn it to the ground."
***
