Chapter Forty-Nine
Vane
The car ride from Rikers was a fever dream of throbbing ribs, the chemical hum of painkillers, and the anchor of Sloane's hand in mine. I thought we were coming home to the silence of the sixty-first floor. I thought the war was over.
I was wrong. Arthur Sterling doesn't concede; he scorched the earth.
He was out on bail. Some judge in his pocket had signed the order, and like a rabid animal backed into a corner, he had decided to tear out as many throats as possible before the end. When we reached the penthouse, the heavy oak door wasn't just unlocked—it was ajar.
"Get behind me," I growled, my voice a jagged rasp. I pushed Sloane back, my broken ribs screaming as I reached for the concealed 9mm kept in the foyer drawer. My fingers gripped empty air. The gun was gone.
The lights were dead. The only glow came from the cold, indifferent neon of the city bleeding through the glass.
"Vane," a voice croaked from the shadows of the library.
Arthur was sitting in my chair. My throne. He held a snub-nosed revolver in a shaking hand, his eyes bloodshot and sunken. He looked like a man who had already seen his own wake.
"You think you've won," Arthur hissed, his voice trembling with a terrifying, hollow laughter. "You think you can just replace me with this... this common whore and her bastard?"
His eyes dropped to Sloane's stomach. My heart didn't just stop; it turned to ice. He knew. The one piece of data I needed to keep secret was out, and in the hands of a madman.
"Arthur, put the fucking gun down," I said, my voice dropping to a low, lethal frequency. "The SEC is crawling through your house. The FBI has your accounts. It's over. Don't make this a murder charge."
"It's over when I say it is!" Arthur roared, his face contorting into a mask of pure hate. He leveled the barrel directly at Sloane's chest.
I didn't calculate the trajectory. I didn't audit the risk. I didn't think about the Sterling name or the firm. I threw myself in front of her, my body a wall of meat and bone between the bullet and the only two things on this planet that mattered.
The shot echoed through the penthouse—a deafening, bone-chilling crack that shattered the glass of the display cases behind us.
A searing, white-hot heat tore through my shoulder, a sensation like a branding iron being driven into my marrow. I didn't stop. I couldn't. Adrenaline—pure, fatherly rage—overrode the pain. I tackled him, the sheer momentum of my body slamming him back against the floor-to-ceiling windows.
We hit the marble in a tangle of limbs and blood. I wrenched the gun from his grip, my fingers finding the soft tissue of his throat. I wanted to feel the life leave him. I wanted to crush the man who dared to point steel at my family.
"Vane! Stop! You're going to kill him!"
Sloane's voice acted like a bucket of ice water. I pulled back from the brink of murder, my chest heaving, blood from my shoulder dripping onto Arthur's silk shirt. He was gasping, his face a sickening shade of purple, his spirit finally, irrevocably broken.
I let him go. He slumped against the base of the desk like a discarded suit.
I turned to Sloane. She was leaning against the mahogany, her face ghost-white, her hands trembling as they clutched her stomach.
"Are you okay?" I gasped, the world starting to tilt as the blood loss caught up with me. My shirt was a dark, wet mess of red.
"I'm fine, I'm fine," she whispered, rushing to me, her hands hovering over the wound. "Vane, you're shot—oh god, there's so much blood—"
"I've had... worse audits," I managed, a weak, jagged joke escaping my lips as I pulled her into my good arm. The smell of gunpowder and her perfume mixed in the air, a scent I'll never forget.
The police were there ten minutes later. As the marshals dragged Arthur toward the elevator, he looked at us one last time, his eyes full of a bitter, dying light.
"You've built a cage for yourselves," he spat, blood on his teeth. "A cage made of blood and secrets. You'll never be free of what you are."
"At least it's our cage, you old bastard," I replied, watching the doors close on the man who raised me to be a monster.
I looked down at Sloane. She was safe. The baby was safe. The contract was null and void, and in its place was a bond written in the blood on my floor.