Chapter 6 - THE NIGHT OF THE STORM
The penthouse went so quiet you could hear the rain lashing against the floor-to-ceiling windows.
Adrian stood absolutely still. The gun in his hand slowly lowered, but the danger radiating from him amplified tenfold.
“My mother died alone in her bed,” Adrian said, his voice devoid of any emotion, which made it all the more terrifying. “The coroner said she suffered a massive hemorrhagic stroke in her sleep.”
Victoria shrank back against the marble floor, wrapping her arms around her ruined dress. “She didn't die in her sleep. She called me over that night. She had found the discrepancies in the charity ledgers. She knew I was stealing.”
I watched, horrified, as Victoria confessed to the very thing she had projected onto me for months.
“She was yelling at me,” Victoria sobbed, avoiding Adrian’s eyes. “She said she was going to cancel our engagement. She was going to ruin my family’s reputation. And then… she just clutched her head. She fell to the floor. She couldn't speak, she could only reach her hand out to me.”
Adrian took a slow step forward. “And what did you do, Victoria?”
“I panicked!” she shrieked. “If I called an ambulance, she would have told you everything! She would have destroyed me! So I… I took her cell phone. And I walked out. I left her there. I thought she would just pass out. I didn't know she would die!”
A sickening wave of nausea hit me. I had held the hands of dying patients. I knew the terror they felt in those final moments. Elena Moretti had died in agony, reaching for help from the woman her son loved, and Victoria had simply walked away to protect her checking account.
Adrian didn't yell. He didn't strike her. He simply looked down at Victoria as if she were an insect he had just crushed beneath his shoe.
“Paul Vance has security footage of you leaving the estate that night, doesn't he?” Adrian deduced quietly. “He used it to turn you into his personal ATM. He had you funneling my mother’s money to the very syndicate that killed Margaret’s father.”
Victoria nodded frantically. “Yes! But tonight, when you found out about the scholarship, Paul panicked. I met him in the parking garage under the gala. I told him you were looking into it. He hit me with a tire iron! He tried to kill me to tie up loose ends!”
Victoria suddenly pitched forward, violently vomiting onto the hardwood floor.
My training immediately kicked in. I didn't see the monster who had mocked me; I saw a patient in critical distress. I rushed forward, dropping to my knees beside her.
“Margaret, step away from her,” Adrian ordered sharply.
“I can't,” I said, gently turning Victoria onto her side so she wouldn't choke. I checked her pulse; it was bounding and slow. I gently touched the bruised side of her head. The skull felt entirely wrong—spongy.
“She has a depressed skull fracture,” I told Adrian, looking up at him urgently. “Her pupil is blown, and her heart rate is dropping. She has an epidural hematoma. Her brain is bleeding, Adrian. If we don't get her to an operating room right now, she’ll be dead in twenty minutes.”
Adrian stared at me. The woman on the floor had ruined my life, stolen my scholarship, and left his mother to die. And yet, I was fighting to save her.
Adrian pulled his phone out. “Marco. Get the medical team up to the penthouse. Now.”
“They can't get up, boss,” Marco’s voice crackled through the phone’s speaker, filled with static and the distinct sound of gunfire. “Someone cut the main power grid to the building. The backup generators are offline. The elevators are dead.”
Suddenly, the penthouse plunged into total, suffocating darkness.
The glittering city lights outside provided the only illumination, casting long, eerie shadows across the marble floors.
“They’re coming up the emergency stairwells,” Marco shouted over the radio. “It’s Vance’s men. They’re heavily armed. Boss, secure the panic room!”
Adrian dropped the radio. He grabbed me by the arm, his grip urgent but protective. “Grab Victoria’s legs. We have to move.”
Together, we dragged the unconscious Victoria across the floor, leaving a smear of blood on the marble. Adrian kicked open a hidden door disguised as a bookshelf in his study. Inside was a steel-reinforced panic room, lined with monitors and emergency supplies.
“Get Lily,” Adrian ordered.
I sprinted to the guest room in the dark. Lily was already awake, terrified by the sudden blackout. I grabbed her hand and hauled her into the panic room just as the heavy oak doors of the penthouse exploded inward.
The sound of automatic gunfire echoed through the massive apartment.
Adrian pushed us all inside the panic room. He grabbed an emergency medical kit from the wall and threw it to me.
“Keep her alive, Margaret,” Adrian commanded, his eyes blazing in the dim emergency lighting of the room. “I need her breathing to testify against Paul.”
“Adrian, what are you doing?” I cried as he stepped back out into the study.
“Protecting my home,” Adrian said softly. He looked at me, a profound respect and something much deeper shining in his eyes. “Lock the door behind me. Do not open it for anyone but me.”
He stepped out and slammed the heavy steel door shut. The deadbolts clicked into place.
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I was trapped in a steel box with my terrified daughter and the dying woman who had destroyed my life.
And outside, the man who had abused me for a decade was hunting the man who had just saved me.
