Chapter 13 - The Woman at the Top of the Stairs
Victoria looked strangely elegant for a fugitive.
Camel coat.
Pearl earrings.
Hair perfectly arranged.
Only the gun in her other hand ruined the image.
Security froze.
Naomi stepped in front of me.
“Victoria.”
Victoria smiled.
“Still collecting strays, Claire?”
Rebecca was shaking.
“Let her go.”
“She betrayed me.”
“She betrayed everyone.”
Victoria shrugged.
“Then perhaps we finally agree on something.”
Police were already surrounding the property.
She had nowhere to go.
Victoria knew it.
That was what made her dangerous.
“You came back for papers?” I asked.
“For proof.”
“Of what?”
“That Thomas Rowan was a thief.”
“My father saved your company.”
“He humiliated my husband.”
“Richard signed the agreements.”
“Because your father trapped him.”
“Richard protected you.”
Her face changed.
There.
The wound.
“He loved me.”
“Yes.”
“He was weak.”
I stared at her.
“You hated him for protecting you?”
“I hated him for needing protection.”
Grant had spent his life trying to earn the love of a woman who regarded vulnerability as contamination.
Suddenly everything about him made terrible sense.
“Put the gun down.”
Victoria laughed.
“You still think this is about a company.”
“What is it about?”
“Legacy.”
She held up the ledger.
“My son was supposed to restore what your father took.”
“You sent him after me.”
“I introduced opportunity.”
“He married me.”
“And ruined everything by falling in love.”
The words landed harder than I expected.
Victoria saw it.
“He could have controlled you.”
“But?”
“You made him soft.”
I almost smiled.
“That may be the first compliment you’ve ever given me.”
Her eyes hardened.
Police called from outside.
Victoria ignored them.
“You opened the red ledger.”
“Yes.”
“Your father built that mechanism to destroy us.”
“No.”
“He built it to stop people like you.”
Silence.
Rebecca suddenly moved.
Victoria grabbed her coat.
The gun shifted.
Security surged.
Everything happened at once.
Rebecca screamed.
Naomi pulled me backward.
Victoria stumbled.
The ledger fell.
A shot cracked through the house.
Then another.
Glass shattered.
Victoria collapsed against the railing.
Nobody moved for half a second.
Then security restrained her.
The bullet had struck the wooden banister beside her.
One security officer had fired only after Victoria discharged her weapon into the ceiling during the struggle.
Rebecca fell to her knees.
Alive.
Victoria was alive too.
Handcuffed.
Furious.
Defeated.
As officers led her through the foyer, she stopped in front of me.
“This isn’t over.”
I looked at her.
“Yes.”
For the first time, I truly believed it.
“It is.”
Police took her away.
The ledger was recovered.
So were the original agreements.
But hidden beneath the documents was something none of us expected.
A sealed envelope.
My father’s handwriting.
RICHARD MERCER — FINAL STATEMENT.
Inside was a notarized letter written six weeks before Richard died.
He admitted knowingly hiding Victoria’s transactions.
He admitted allowing company funds to be routed to her entities.
And he admitted something else.
Grant was not supposed to inherit control of Mercer Healthcare.
Richard had intended to place the company into an independent stewardship structure.
But after his death, the amendment vanished.
Someone had destroyed it.
Someone with access to his estate.
Victoria.
When Grant learned, he sat in a federal interview room for nearly two hours without speaking.
May you like
His entire life had been built around avenging a father whose final wish his mother had betrayed.
And the empire Grant believed was his birthright had never been intended to belong to him at all.
