Chapter 6 - The Architect of Lies
The realization hit me with the physical force of a sledgehammer. Evelyn had never just tolerated Julian; she had meticulously calculated his destruction from the very beginning. And all those years she played the benevolent matriarch, paying for Chloe’s private schooling and offering me a meager allowance, she was simply keeping her investments under constant surveillance.
Footsteps echoed from the overhead wooden floorboards, followed by the muffled thud of a body hitting the floor.
"Ethan!" Chloe gasped, trying to scramble back toward the stairs, but I locked my arms around her waist, holding her back with every ounce of strength I had left.
"If you go up there, his sacrifice is meaningless, Chloe!" I whispered fiercely into her ear, my own tears burning against her cold skin. "We have to survive until five o'clock. We have to reach the perimeter."
Before we could find the cellar exit, a heavy iron bolt slammed back, and the auxiliary door swung inward. Standing in the dim threshold, bathed in the amber light of an emergency lantern, was not Marcus, but Beatrice. Her face was streaked with smeared mascara and dried blood, her silver knife lowered at her side. But the rabid fury in her posture had vanished, replaced by a hollow, terrifying vacancy.
"You really don't know, do you, Eleanor?" Beatrice said, her voice shaking with an unnatural, childlike tremor. "You think she loves you? You think she protects any of us?"
"Drop the knife, Beatrice," I warned, stepping in front of Chloe and picking up a heavy glass magnum of vintage wine from a nearby rack. "I swear to God, if you take one more step toward my daughter, I will kill you."
Beatrice let out a breath that sounded like a cracked sob. She lifted her trembling left hand, showing a thick sheaf of legal documents she had snatched from Marcus’s briefcase during the scuffle upstairs.
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"Julian wasn't the only one she poisoned against us," Beatrice whispered, tears cutting fresh paths through the grime on her cheeks. "Mother told me Julian raped me twenty-four years ago while I was unconscious at the midsummer gala. She told me Chloe was the bastard child of that violation, taken from my womb and given to you because you couldn't conceive. She made me hate this girl for two decades to keep me from asking why Julian’s trust never paid out to my name."
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