Chapter 8 - The Nursery ProtocolWeston’s heart stopped.
The nursery.
Leaving Vance unconscious on the floor, Weston broke into a dead sprint toward the hallway, ignoring the flames creeping up the eastern corridor. Holly was right behind him, her tactical instincts screaming danger.
They burst through the double doors of the east wing nursery.
The room was bathed in the soft glow of a star-projector nightlight. Mary was gone. The bed was empty, her gray teddy bear resting innocently on the pillows.
Standing in the center of the nursery, holding the terrified six-year-old tightly in front of him with a blade pressed against her small throat, was Tristan.
His bleeding hand was forgotten. His face was twisted into a mask of absolute madness.
"Stay back!" Tristan shrieked, the knife trembling against Mary’s skin. "Don't take another step, Weston! Or the little brat joins her mother!"
Weston froze. The apex predator of the underworld—the man who controlled cities and broke empires—was completely paralyzed. For the first time in his life, Weston Hargrove looked utterly helpless.
"Tristan... let her go," Weston whispered, his voice cracking with a raw, agonizing vulnerability that no enemy had ever heard. "She's your niece. She has your blood."
"Blood?" Tristan laughed hysterically, tears streaming down his cheeks. "Blood is what chained me to your shadow for a decade! You took all the glory, you took the empire, and you left me to pick up your scraps! Vance was just my employee, brother. I hired the Blackwood Syndicate six months ago to take you out so I could take the throne!"
Holly walked slowly into the room, her hands held out to her sides, empty and non-threatening. Her voice was remarkably calm, cutting through Tristan's hysterical rant like a scalpel.
"You didn't just hire Vance, did you, Tristan?" Holly said softly, taking a careful step forward. "You were the one who sold the detonator schematics to the Blackwood Syndicate three years ago. You killed Weston’s wife because she found out about your embezzlement."
Tristan’s eyes widened in sheer panic as he looked at Holly. "Shut up! You don't know anything!"
"I know everything," Holly said, locking her eyes onto his. "Because David—my brother—was the engineer who designed the encryption chip for that very bomb. And before your men murdered him in Seattle, he managed to send me the complete backup log. The primary user ID on the transaction wasn't an anonymous syndicate account. It was registered to a Swiss bank account owned by Tristan Hargrove."
The silence in the room was absolute, save for the crackling of distant flames from the hallway.
May you like
Tristan’s grip on the knife tightened instinctively. "I had to! They were going to expose—"
He never finished the sentence.
