Chapter 12 - The Architect's Confession
Doctor Robert Vance broke before his older brother could utter another denial.
The physician pushed himself up from his chair, clutching his plaster-encased arm, tears streaming down his trembling cheeks.
“I told you this would happen, Marcus!” Robert screamed, his voice cracking with hysteria.
“I told you we couldn't keep him drugged forever!”
“His tolerance was building every single year!”
“I never wanted any part of the Blackwood fire, but you forced me into this madness!”
Marcus turned on his younger brother with eyes burning like coals from hell.
“Shut your mouth, Robert!” Marcus snarled, his polite veneer shattering completely into raw savagery.
“You took your twenty million dollars in offshore trusts without complaining!”
“You built your private clinic on DeLuca money!”
Robert ignored him, turning instead toward Daniel with pleading, bloodshot eyes.
“I kept the real dosage logs, Daniel!” Robert sobbed, falling to his knees beside the boardroom table.
“In my private office safe at the clinic, under the file marked Hydra!”
“I have the daily reports from eighteen years ago!”
“Marcus ordered me to administer the neuro-blockers the moment you woke up from the coma!”
“Arthur was broken by Victoria’s death and the fire, and Marcus convinced him that you were too weak to know the truth!”
“Arthur thought he was protecting you from the trauma, but Marcus was only protecting his own control over the trust!”
The board members sat frozen in horror, listening to the physician confess to eighteen years of chemical slavery.
Sir Reginald Thornton stood up, his face flushed with righteous indignation.
“Mister Vance, you are stripped of your position as senior adviser effective immediately,” Thornton declared, his voice booming through the chamber.
“The board hereby revokes all power of attorney and conservatorship petitions.”
“Security or no security, you will answer to the state attorney general before the sun sets.”
Marcus Vance backed away toward the floor-to-ceiling panoramic windows, his chest heaving violently.
He looked around the room, realizing that not a single soul at the obsidian table would lift a finger to save him.
Thirty years of manipulation, blackmail, and corporate tyranny had evaporated in less than thirty minutes.
A low, manic laugh began to bubble up from the depths of Marcus’s throat.
He looked at Daniel, his teeth bared in a feral sneer.
“Do you really think you’ve won, Daniel?” Marcus whispered, his eyes wide and wild.
“Do you think this company will survive when the world learns the DeLuca shipping line was founded on blood and stolen identities?”
“The press will tear this family to pieces before the stock exchange opens at nine o’clock.”
“You are not an heir; you are the bastard son of a dead mistress and a coward who hid behind my counsel.”
Daniel walked around the obsidian table, each step slow, unhurried, and devoid of fear.
He stopped two feet away from the ruined old man.
“The press will report the truth, Marcus,” Daniel said, his voice calm, heavy, and final.
“They will report that the rightful heir survived your fire, survived your poison, and took back his family’s name.”
“And they will report that you will spend the rest of your miserable life inside a maximum-security federal penitentiary.”
Before Marcus could lunge or speak, the heavy boardroom doors swung open once more.
Four uniformed federal marshals entered the room, led by the assistant district attorney with an active arrest warrant in hand.
“Marcus Vance, Doctor Robert Vance, you are under arrest for conspiracy to commit murder, corporate fraud, and unlawful endangerment,” the lead agent announced.
Marcus did not struggle as the cold steel handcuffs clicked around his wrists.
His eyes never left Daniel’s face.
As the marshals dragged him toward the executive elevator, Marcus leaned in, his lips curling into one last venomous grin.
“You still don’t know everything, Daniel,” Marcus whispered into the corridor air.
“Go to the ruins of Blackwood Manor if you want to know what your beloved father really thought of you.”
“The nursery safe still holds his final confession.”
May you like
“Ask the girl beside you why her mother truly took that key.”
The elevator doors slid shut, cutting off the old monster’s voice forever.
