Chapter 3 - The Mask of Sibling Devotion
Marcus shoved his father deeper into the shadow of the elevator cabin, gesturing wildly for Eli to step back into the dim corner behind the displaced portrait.
Arthur was too weak to stand, his body shivering uncontrollably from shock, dehydration, and hypothermia despite the stuffy air.
Marcus pulled his blazer off and draped it over his father’s trembling shoulders, his mind racing through catastrophic scenarios.
He stepped out of the shaft and pulled the accordion gate partially closed, leaving it unlatched just enough so Arthur could breathe.
He straightened his shirt, wiped a cold streak of sweat from his forehead, and stepped into the center of the gallery hallway just as Susan turned the corner.
Susan Carrow-Vance looked impeccable, as she always did when disaster loomed.
She was forty-six years old, dressed in a tailored charcoal wool coat with pearl earrings that had belonged to their late mother.
Her posture was straight, confident, and utterly devoid of remorse.
Behind her walked Vincent, carrying a sleek leather folder under his arm, his phone pressed to his ear as he murmured quiet, monosyllabic instructions to someone on the line.
Susan stopped dead in her tracks the moment she saw the splintered wood and the massive family portrait hanging off its iron wall mounts.
Her smile vanished instantly, replaced by a mask of cold, predatory calculation that stripped away every trace of sisterly affection.
Her eyes darted from the gaping hole in the wall down to the white plaster dust covering Marcus’s knees.
"What have you done to Mother's portrait, Marcus?" she asked, her voice dangerously quiet, completely ignoring the fact that a hidden room had been exposed.
Vincent ended his call, slid his phone into his breast pocket, and slowly positioned himself between Marcus and the wide arched doorway leading to the main foyer.
"You told me he was in Connecticut, Susan," Marcus said, his voice flat, dangerously devoid of any emotion as he fought to keep from lunging at her throat.
Susan didn't blink.
She did not express shock, nor did she feign confusion.
Instead, a faint, condescending sigh escaped her red-painted lips, as if Marcus were merely a child who had accidentally knocked over a glass of milk.
"You were never cut out for the realities of this family, little brother," Susan said, taking two slow steps toward him.
"Father lost his mind months ago.
He was going to give the entire shipping port authority contract to an environmental trust.
He was going to liquidate thirty years of family legacy and leave us with nothing but corporate liability."
"So you starved him in a service elevator?" Marcus hissed, his fists clenching so hard his knuckles turned bone white.
"You locked an eighty-two-year-old man behind a wall like a piece of worthless trash?"
"He wasn't going to stay there forever," Vincent interrupted smoothly, stepping forward and opening his leather folder to reveal several crisp legal documents.
Vincent’s voice was calm, clinical, and chillingly devoid of humanity.
"We needed nine business days for the automated international transfers to clear without triggering the Securities and Exchange Commission flags.
Arthur was going to have a very peaceful, tragic medical event tonight at an unlicensed hospice care home in upstate New York.
A simple cardiac arrest brought on by his advanced age and declining cognitive health.
Nobody would have questioned an autopsy on an eighty-two-year-old man with documented memory loss."
Vincent smiled, a thin, razor-sharp smirk that revealed how thoroughly they had planned the slaughter of Arthur's life.
"The only problem was Arthur’s stubbornness," Vincent continued, tapping the documents with an expensive gold pen.
"The holding company’s master trust requires a wet-ink signature witnessed in person by a certified notary, or a thumbprint authenticated on biometric paper.
The autopen won’t work for the final offshore liquidation.
And Arthur refused to press his thumb to the ink pad.
Every time we opened that gate to offer him water, he spat in Susan’s face."
From behind the hanging canvas, a weak, wet cough echoed through the gallery.
Susan’s eyes hardened into steel.
She looked past Marcus, directly at the narrow gap in the iron gate.
"He always was an arrogant old bastard," Susan said, her voice dropping all pretense of gentility.
"He gave you the chief financial position because you were compliant, Marcus.
He knew you would never question where the dividend checks came from.
He thought I was too ruthless, too much like him.
Well, he was right.
I am ruthless enough to keep this family from drowning in bankruptcy."
"You are going to prison for the rest of your life," Marcus whispered, his heart pounding in his ears like a war drum.
"Am I?" Susan laughed softly, a dry, humorless sound that chilled Marcus to the marrow.
"Who is going to tell the police, Marcus?
You?
With what proof?
The police in this county have received campaign donations from my legal firm for twelve years.
The sheriff is Vincent’s second cousin.
If I call them right now, I will tell them that our senile father escaped his caregivers, wandered into the abandoned wing of the house, and suffered a fatal fall.
And I will tell them that you, in your frantic grief, tried to tamper with the scene."
Vincent reached into his coat pocket, not pulling out a weapon, but a set of heavy brass keys and a second pair of industrial cable ties.
"Marcus, be reasonable," Vincent said, taking another step closer, his eyes scanning the room.
"Sign the joint conservatorship release as Arthur's secondary guardian.
Take two million dollars, take your son, and move to California.
Forget this house ever existed.
If you don't, things are going to get remarkably complicated for everyone in this room."
"Where is Eli?" Susan asked suddenly, her eyes narrowing as she realized the boy was not standing beside his father.
Marcus’s stomach plummeted into a bottomless void.
May you like
Eli was gone.
The dark corner behind the portrait was empty.
