Chapter 9 - Inferno of Justice
Before I could reach the front foyer, the sound of shattering glass echoed through the formal dining room, followed instantly by the thick, choking smell of gasoline.
"Claire!" Julian’s unhinged voice screamed from the hallway. "If I can't have this house, if I can't have the money, you aren't getting anything either!"
A bright burst of orange flame roared to life in the living room as gas-soaked curtains caught fire. The smoke detector shrieked, filling the high-ceilinged room with deafening alarms.
I gripped the leather folder containing the audio tape and the poison vial tightly against my chest and ran toward the side exit leading to the gardens.
Julian burst through the smoke, his face blackened with soot, his eyes wild and bloodshot. He held a heavy iron fireplace poker in his right hand.
"You took everything from me!" he roared, swinging the iron bar wildly toward my head.
I ducked beneath the heavy iron bar, the wind from the swing whistling past my ear. I didn't scream; I didn't panic. Two years of holding back my anger had forged a cold, sharp instinct inside me.
As he raised the poker for a second strike, I grabbed a heavy bronze statuette from a side table and smashed it directly into his bruised jaw—the exact same spot I had hit him at the banquet table twenty-four hours earlier.
Julian groaned, dropping the iron bar and stumbling backward into the burning dining room rug.
"You always were a coward, Julian," I said, stepping over him as the flames licked the doorframes. "You let your mother fight your battles, and when she failed, you tried to burn down your own home."
I grabbed his collar and pulled his heavy body out through the side patio doors onto the cool green grass of the lawn, dumping him on the turf just as fire engines rounded the corner, sirens wailing through the night sky.
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The grand Montgomery estate burst into a towering inferno behind us, sending sparks and thick black smoke high into the stars—a physical manifestation of the empire they had built on lies, violence, and blood.
Julian lay on the grass, coughing violently, staring up at the burning mansion in utter horror as police officers tackled him to the ground and slapped heavy iron cuffs onto his wrists for arson and attempted murder.
