Thee wedding cake hit my face so hard that the entire reception went silent

"Sniper!" Julian roared, tackling me behind the massive marble base of the high altar as a second bullet shattered the stone inches from where my head had been.

Splinters of marble sprayed across my face.

Julian pulled me flat against the damp earth, shielding my body with his own. "Are you hit?" he gasped, his eyes wild with adrenaline.

"No! I'm fine!" I yelled over the deafening crack of a third round striking the altar. "Who is shooting? Arthur is in custody! Garrick is dead! Who else is there?!"

From high up in the ruined choir loft, a voice floated down through the rain—a deep, resonant, aristocratic voice that sounded neither like Arthur Vance nor Garrick Sterling.

It was an older voice. Cultured, terrifyingly calm, and chillingly familiar to anyone who had ever followed the highest corridors of state power.

"Arthur was an impatient fool," the voice said, echoing through the cathedral rafters. "He always operated with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. And poor Garrick... such wasted genetic material. A shame his mother couldn't instill even an ounce of spine into him."

Julian’s face went chalk-white. "Senator Sterling..."

"Your grandfather?" I gasped, staring at Julian in sheer disbelief.

"My maternal grandfather," Julian whispered, his jaw trembling with a horror I had never seen in him before. "Lord Alistair Sterling. Former Chief Justice. Current State Senator. He... he was supposed to be in Washington. He was Eleanor's older brother."

"Eleanor was a sentimental old fool, my dear Julian," the voice called down, the footsteps of the speaker slowly descending the spiral stone stairs of the choir loft. "She thought she could hoard the third key. She thought she could pass the entire Sterling foundation to a bastard child Victoria spawned with an unranked baker."

A tall, distinguished man stepped into the dim beam of our discarded flashlight.

He wore a pristine black trench coat, entirely untouched by the rain. His silver hair was perfectly coiffed, his face lined with the sharp, aristocratic cruelty that seemed to be the curse of the Sterling bloodline. In his hands, he held a sleek, silenced sniper rifle.

Two men in unmarked black suits stepped out behind him, their pistols drawn.

"You," I spat, rising slightly behind the marble altar, my voice trembling with disgust. "You orchestrated everything. Arthur wasn't the head of the snake. He was just your attack dog."

Alistair Sterling smiled, a thin, bloodless smile that chilled me to the bone. "Arthur had the muscle and the dirty accounts. I had the courts, the legislature, and the police. A perfect partnership, Clara. Until you decided to make a public circus out of your little wedding day dispute."

"A dispute?" I said, stepping out from behind the altar, Julian rising beside me, his arm tight against mine. "Your family threw a three-tier wedding cake in my face! You tried to run me out of town like an animal!"

"And you should have run, child," Alistair sighed, raising the rifle with terrifying ease, aiming the barrel directly at my forehead. "If you had run, you would still be alive, baking your cheap tarts in some anonymous midwestern town. But you had to come back. You had to reclaim High Ridge. You had to open Eleanor's archives."

"The feds have the archives, Alistair," Julian said coldly. "Arthur's server is already in federal custody. You're finished."

"A federal indictment against Arthur Vance?" Alistair laughed, a dry, mocking chuckle. "Arthur is a ghost who officially died twelve years ago. His testimony will never touch me. The judges who will hear his case? I appointed every single one of them. The Attorney General? I funded his campaign. The only loose ends that connect my name to this offshore network... are sitting right here in this cathedral."

Alistair tilted his head toward Garrick's corpse. "Garrick is gone. Helena will have an unfortunate accident in her holding cell before sunrise. And as for you two..."

Alistair raised his hand to signal his men.

"Wait!" I shouted.

Alistair paused, one eyebrow arched in mild amusement. "Last words, Clara? Or are you going to beg for your life like your pathetic mother did?"

"The third vault," I said, my voice steady, stalling for every second. "You don't know where it is, do you?"

Alistair’s eyes narrowed slightly. The smile vanished from his face.

"Eleanor gave me the true cipher," I lied, looking him dead in the eye with unwavering conviction. "She didn't put it in the server. She put it in the only place none of you ever bothered to look. The foundation beneath the old bakery in the lower district. The place you burned down twenty years ago."

Alistair stared at me, his gaze calculating, weighing my words.

For a fraction of a second, the greed in his eyes overpowered his caution.