Chapter 38 - The Living Will of the Patriarch
We reached the blast doors of the Level Three medical suite. The digital panel beside the frame had been smashed from the inside, wires sparking against the steel. The door was cracked open two inches, held by an emergency safety latch.
Daniel wedged the barrel of his carbine into the seam, using his shoulder as a battering ram. The reinforced latch snapped with a violent crack, and we spilled into the surgical theater.
The room was vast, dominated by floor-to-ceiling glass observation panels that looked out into the stormy Atlantic. Banks of high-tech telemetry monitors beeped rhythmically around two central surgical gurneys.
On the left gurney lay Arthur Vance Senior.
He was stripped of his heavy wool coat, wearing a sterile surgical gown. Up close, without the shadows of the rain, the patriarch of the Vance dynasty looked like a walking corpse. His skin was translucent and yellowed, mapped with dark purple veins. Plastic cannulas and IV lines snaked into his neck and arms, pumping clear fluids and dark anticoagulant into his failing heart.
Beside him, strapped into an infant incubator connected to a pediatric plasmapheresis machine, was the baby. My baby. A tiny, fragile bundle of warmth, crying softly behind the acrylic glass, a microscopic catheter taped to his tiny umbilical port.
Standing over the incubator was a trembling woman in blood-soaked clothes, holding a scalpel in her shaking hand.
It was Chloe.
Her shoulder was wrapped in a crude, bloody pressure bandage from the bullet Arthur had put through her, but her eyes were wild, dilated with pure panic and hysterical rage.
"Don't move!" Chloe shrieked, whipping around as we entered, pointing the scalpel toward Daniel. "Stay back! Both of you!"
"Chloe, lower the blade," Daniel said, keeping his weapon trained on the surgical team of three men in scrubs who were frozen in the corner with their hands raised.
"He's going to kill him!" Chloe wept, tears carving paths through the dried blood on her face. "Arthur told me... he told me I was going to be the head of the trust! He said we’d run the family together! But he brought me here to watch! He’s harvesting the marrow, Elizabeth! He never cared about the name! He never cared about any of us!"
From the surgical bed, Arthur Vance Senior turned his head. His cold, gray eyes, ancient and pitiless, fixed directly upon me. He didn't flinch at the sight of Daniel's rifle. He didn't even blink.
"You always were the most sentimental of my creations, Elizabeth," Arthur whispered, his voice rattling in his chest like dry autumn leaves. "You survived the balcony. You survived the hospital. Remarkable. Truly remarkable genetic resilience. Your mother lacked that strength. That’s why I had to dispose of her."
The room froze.
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"What did you say?" I asked, my voice barely audible above the hum of the dialysis pump.
"Victoria thought she was protecting the family," Arthur chuckled, a wet, bloody cough interrupting his words. "She thought she pushed you off that balcony to save Chloe’s inheritance. Foolish woman. She didn't know that Harold Vogel poisoned her tea every morning for six months on my direct orders. She died in federal custody an hour ago, Elizabeth. Her heart gave out. One less loose end."
