Chapter 8 - THE MOTHER'S RECKONINGBOOM!
Alexander kicked open the heavy iron door of the elevated office, stepping inside with his weapon drawn. Hannah walked right beside him, her pistol raised, her expression cold as ice.
Inside, Eleanor Vane stood behind a heavy oak desk. Beside her, Trevor let out a terrified shriek, scrambling backward into a corner behind a stack of steel filing cabinets.
"Hannah! Please!" Trevor whimpered, lifting his hands in surrender. "It was my mother! She made me do everything! She’s the one who wanted the ledger!"
"Shut up, you sniveling coward!" Eleanor spat at her son, her cold blue eyes burning with vicious fury as she glared at Hannah. "Look at you, Hannah Caldwell. Wearing diamond rings and dark silk, pretending to be royalty. You're nothing but a watchmaker's brat!"
"And you are a thief who ruined lives for money you didn't earn," Hannah said quietly, stepping forward until she was five feet from the desk.
"That four billion dollars belonged to the Vane Enterprise!" Eleanor screamed, pulling a small pearl-handled revolver from her fur coat pocket!
Before Eleanor could raise the weapon, Alexander moved with terrifying speed.
He caught Eleanor’s wrist, twisting it violently downward!
CRACK!
Eleanor shrieked in agony as the gun dropped onto the desk, her wrist broken instantly!
Alexander grabbed her by the lapels of her expensive fur coat, slamming her against the glass window overlooking the burning warehouse floor below!
"You threatened my wife," Alexander growled into her ear, his voice sounding like grinding steel. "You put a bounty on the Donnessa of the Cross family."
"Kill me then!" Eleanor hissed through her teeth, blood running from her lip. "You'll never find the ledger! Marcus Caldwell buried it where no one will ever look!"
Hannah slowly walked over to the desk, picking up her father’s pocket watch that Alexander had set down earlier.
She pressed the small brass pin on the side of the watch.
CLICK.
The back casing snapped open, revealing not gears or cogs... but a microscopic, high-density titanium micro-chip embedded directly into the mechanical heart of the watch.
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Eleanor’s eyes widened in utter, paralyzing horror. "What..."
"My father was a master watchmaker, Eleanor," Hannah said softly. "He hid the ledger inside the very thing he spent thirty years repairing in Queens. I've had it around my neck since the day he died."
