Chapter 19 - The ExterminationI walked into the private lounge on the first floor. Margaret was shoved into a leather chair, surrounded by my father’s security team.
When I entered the room, Margaret lunged upward, her face twisted in feral rage.
"You bitch!" she screamed, spit flying from her lips. "Where is he? Where is my grandson?!"
I didn't blink. I walked slowly across the room, my heels clicking sharply against the hardwood floor. I stopped inches from her face, towering over her.
"He is not your grandson," I said, my voice dropping to a register so cold it made the security guards stiffen. "He is my son. And you will never, ever lay eyes on him."
"Ethan will destroy you!" Margaret wept, thrashing against the guards who held her down. "He promised me! He said we would take everything from you!"
"Ethan is a parasite who lied to you just like he lied to me," I replied calmly. "There is no safety deposit box, Margaret. There is no money. He sent you here to die, or to go to prison, because he is a coward who cannot fight his own battles."
The earpiece buzzed.
"Miller is subdued," my father reported, not even sounding out of breath. "Richmond PD is on their way to take out the trash."
I looked down at Margaret. The realization of her absolute failure was slowly sinking in. The delusion she had clung to for five years was shattering.
"You’re going to federal prison, Margaret," I told her, turning my back on her. "Conspiracy to commit kidnapping. You’ll be in a cell right down the highway from your son. I'll make sure you never share a visiting hour."
The police arrived swiftly, discreetly hauling a sobbing, broken Margaret and a bloody, handcuffed Officer Miller out through the hotel's loading dock. The guests in the ballroom never even knew there was a disruption.
I took the elevator up to the second floor, where my father was standing over Miller's dropped burner phone.
"He was supposed to call Ethan to confirm the extraction," my father said, handing me the phone.
I took the device. The battery was fully charged. I dialed the direct, unmonitored line to the prison's solitary confinement block—a number my father had extracted from Miller.
It rang twice before a guard picked up. "Yeah?"
"Put Ethan Vance on the line," I commanded. "Tell him Miller is calling."
There was a pause, the sound of heavy boots, and the clanking of a steel door. Then, the ragged, eager breath of the man who had once been my husband came through the speaker.
"Miller? Do you have him?" Ethan demanded, his voice trembling with manic anticipation.
"Hello, Ethan," I said.
The silence on the other end of the line was absolute. It was the silence of a man plunging into a bottomless abyss.
"Claire," he whispered, a sound of pure, unadulterated terror.
"Your mother is in handcuffs," I told him, my voice carrying the full weight of my victory. "Your guard is going to federal lockup. And my son is sleeping safely in my house. The house you tried to steal. The house you tried to burn."
"Claire, please—" Ethan begged, his voice cracking, the pathetic reality of his powerlessness finally breaking his mind.
"Five years ago, you told me that I was nothing without you," I said, looking out the hotel window at the sparkling city I now commanded. "You were wrong, Ethan. I am everything. And you are nothing but a ghost. Rot in the dark."
May you like
I hung up the phone and dropped it into my father’s hand.
"Burn it," I said.
