Chapter 5 - The Daughter’s Price
While Julian was being dragged back toward the holding cells under round-the-clock federal guard, the outer office doors flew open.
Madison stumbled into the room, her designer mascara streaked down her cheeks, her hands trembling so hard she dropped her diamond-encrusted iPhone onto the carpet. The screen shattered into a spiderweb of glass.
"Emily... please," Madison sobbed, dropping to her knees right before the mahogany table. "Please, Emily! I swear on my life, I didn't know! Mom never told me about the medicine. She told me Richard had heart disease! She told me you abandoned the family to marry some nobody in Europe!"
I looked down at my stepsister. For six years, this girl had walked through my childhood home wearing my late mother’s heirlooms. She had laughed while Patricia tossed my luggage out into the rain. Only two hours ago, aboard Flight 412, she had sneered at my worn coat and shoved her half-eaten gourmet tray into my hands, telling me to fetch her more champagne from the galley.
"Get up, Madison," I said, my voice dead and cold. "Kneeling doesn't suit your social status."
"They're putting Mom in a federal detention center!" Madison wailed, clutching at the hem of my coat. "They said the bail is ten million dollars cash, and all our accounts are frozen! The penthouse in Manhattan... the doorman wouldn't even let my driver up! Emily, we’re sisters! We grew up under the same roof!"
"We were never sisters," I replied, stepping back so her manicured nails slipped from my coat. "You were an interloper. You watched Patricia forge my father’s signature on the codicil. You held the camera while she burned my mother’s oil portrait in the courtyard."
"I was nineteen! I was scared of her!" Madison gasped for air, her face red and blotchy. "Listen to me! I have something you need! Mom kept a second safe. Not the one in the wall behind the study—she has a private safe deposit box at the Manhattan Gold Depository. Box 804. She made me memorize the six-digit override code in case Julian ever turned on her!"
Marcus glanced at me, his eyebrow arching with intense calculated interest. "A dead-man's switch. Patricia didn't trust Julian Thorne any more than he trusted her."
I crouched down until I was eye-level with Madison. "Why are you giving this to me, Madison? You think this buys your penthouse back? You think this erases the last six years?"
"I don't care about the penthouse anymore!" Madison cried out, tears washing away the last remnants of her arrogance. "Julian’s men came to my apartment an hour before we left for the airport. They searched my room. They were looking for the box key! Julian was going to kill us too, Emily! Once the flight to London landed and the merger closed, Mom and I were going to have an 'accident' in the Swiss Alps! Mom was too stupid to see it, but I heard him on the balcony!"
"What is the code?" I demanded.
Madison swallowed hard, her chest heaving. "Zero-nine-one-seven-four-two. Richard’s birthday followed by the day your mother died. Mom chose it out of spite."
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I stood up, turning to Marcus. "Alert the New York branch of Vance & Sterling Forensics. Secure Box 804 before sunrise. If Julian has men stationed in Manhattan, tell our private security team to use lethal force if necessary."
"Already done, Ms. Bennett," Marcus replied, his fingers flying across his secure terminal. "Transport is waiting downstairs. The private Gulfstream G650 is fueled at Runway 3. We can be in Manhattan in forty minutes."
