Chapter 15 - The Man with the Match
The flare spun across the wet concrete, hissing harmlessly as it submerged in a pool of fire-sprinkler runoff.
Greg and the masked intruder crashed into the heavy cast-iron frame of Loom Number Four. The intruder was younger, faster, and driven by wild desperation, but Greg was fighting for his family, for his redemption, for the life he had nearly surrendered to shame.
Greg caught the man by the lapels of his jumpsuit, slamming him down against the wet stone floor. I ran forward, raising the heavy iron crowbar.
"Don't move!" I shouted, the cold harbor water raining down on my head, soaking my hair and clothes. "Don't you dare move!"
The man struggled once more, but Greg drove his knee into the man's chest, pinning him securely. Greg reached down with a soot-stained, trembling hand and ripped the rubber respirator off the intruder’s face.
I gasped, stumbling back half a step.
It wasn't a nameless mercenary or a waterfront thug.
It was Bradley Sterling—Julian Sterling’s twenty-four-year-old son, Evelyn’s fiancé.
"You miserable cowards," Bradley spat, blood and soot trickling from his split lip. He glared at me with pure, unadulterated venom. "You stole everything my father spent thirty years building. You stole Evelyn’s rightful inheritance! She was the eldest! She was supposed to own this entire valley!"
"She threw an eight-year-old child’s blanket into a trash can because she couldn't stand that love built something her greed never could," I said, my voice cutting through the steady patter of the sprinkler deluge like a razor.
The heavy steel fire doors at the far end of the hall were suddenly thrown open with tremendous force.
David stormed in, flanked by ten armed Boston police officers and fire rescue personnel. When David saw me standing soaked in the smoke, clutching the crowbar, and Greg holding down Bradley Sterling, his face turned to pure, incandescent wrath.
"Clear the floor!" David commanded the officers.
Two officers moved in instantly, cuffing Bradley Sterling and yanking him to his feet. As they dragged him past David, Bradley sneered, "You're too late, Vance. Check your private estate docks on the North Shore. Evelyn isn't here. She took the launch two hours ago. Whatever you think you saved here, she’s already taken from your private safe at Sycamore Manor."
My blood ran instantly cold.
*Sycamore Manor.*
The safe in our grandmother’s private cedar study—the safe that held the true heirloom: the original, hand-spun seed-cotton fiber that had been cross-woven into Chloe’s blanket, the genetic blueprint for our entire sustainable textile revolution.
David’s phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket, clicked speaker, and held it up between us.
May you like
Evelyn's voice came through the line, cold, crystalline, and dripping with malicious triumph.
"Did you enjoy the fireworks, Clara?" she purred over the static of a ship’s marine radio. "Bradley was always so dramatic. But while you were playing the brave savior of your little sweatshop, I walked right through your front gates. The safe is empty. The core patents and the master seeds are on their way to international waters."
