Chapter 947
The drive to the Vance estate was silent. Alistair drove with one hand, his eyes sweeping the mirrors for tails. Skye sat in the passenger seat, turning the Vance bullet between her fingers like a worry stone.
They didn’t call ahead. They rammed the gate.
The iron gates of the Vance manor buckled under the reinforced SUV. Alistair didn’t slow until they screeched to a halt at the foot of the main steps.
Security swarmed them immediately.
𝖱𝗈𝗆𝖺n𝘤𝖾 𝗮𝘯d paѕs𝗶о𝗻 o𝘯 𝗴а𝘭𝘯𝗈𝘷𝗲𝗹ѕ.c𝘰m
“Stand down!” Alistair stepped out of the car, gun drawn but pointed at the ground. “I am Alistair Thorne. Tell your master I’m here for his head.”
The guards hesitated. They knew who he was.
The front door opened. It wasn’t Julian. It was Travis Tate.
The butler looked impeccable — not a hair out of place. He showed no trace of a man who had driven a car into them the day before. “Mr. Thorne,” Travis said, inclining his head slightly. “Master Julian is expecting you.”
“Expecting us?” Skye slammed her car door. “Did he calculate this too?”
“He calculates everything, Ms. Sterling.” Travis stepped aside.
They marched into the library. Julian sat by the fire, looking worse than before. An oxygen tank stood beside his chair, a clear tube running to his nose.
“You attacked us,” Skye said. She didn’t waste time. She dropped the photo of Travis driving the SUV onto the table. “Explain.”
Julian looked at the photo. He didn’t deny it.
“I saved you,” he wheezed.
“Saved us?” Alistair stepped forward, his anger radiating like heat from a furnace. “You nearly crushed my arm.”
“If I hadn’t staged that attack,” Julian said, his voice thin and measured, “the real attack would have been a bomb. Under Parker’s car.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The Vance Elders,” Julian said. “My uncles. Specifically, Marcus Vance. They have been watching. They know I am weakening. They want the leadership. They want to hand the Vance network over to the Mastermind in exchange for immunity.”
Skye went still. “Your own family is selling you out?”
“They are old men afraid of the purge,” Julian said with quiet disgust. “They planned to kill Maximillian to prove I couldn’t control the situation — to trigger a vote of no confidence.”
“So you attacked us first?”
“I staged a failed hit,” Julian said. “To show them that Maximillian is protected. That the situation is volatile but under my control. It bought us time.”
“And the bullet?” Alistair slammed the brass casing onto the table. “In my father’s vault?”
Julian looked at it. A shadow of deep, ancient pain crossed his face.
“That wasn’t me,” he said softly. “That was Ethan.”
“Ethan?” Skye asked. “Your brother? The one we just pulled out of the hotel?”
“Twenty years ago,” Julian said. “Ethan found out that Dominic was planning to betray the Syndicate. Ethan was unstable even then. He stole my father’s gun and went to Dominic’s estate.”
“He tried to kill my father?” Alistair’s voice dropped to a whisper of pure horror.
.
.