Chapter 45 - THE THIRTEENTH BULLET
"No," Nicholas said, the paper trembling imperceptibly between his gloved fingers. "My mother was murdered."
"Your mother didn't die in 2001, Nicholas," Isabella said, her voice dropping to a whisper that cut through the silence of the vault like a razor. "She didn't run to Europe to save you. She staged her death to take the offshore trust and cut Victor out of the global assets entirely. Arthur helped her disappear because she was the only one who held the master cryptographic keys to the international accounts."
Nicholas looked up, the foundations of his entire existence fracturing, crumbling into dust. "Then who died in that car in Milan?"
"A surrogate," Isabella replied coldly. "A woman Arthur paid to take the fall. Just like Victor thought Daniel Santos was in that car tonight."
Nicholas stepped forward, his eyes burning into Isabella’s face. "Where is she, Isabella? If she’s alive, where is she?"
Isabella didn't answer immediately. She walked to the central safe, reached inside, and pulled out an unsealed, heavy parchment envelope bearing the wax seal of the Bank of Switzerland.
"She’s been living in Geneva under an assumed name for twenty-three years, Nicholas. Waiting for Victor to either die or be locked away where his reach could never touch her again. But there was one condition Arthur wrote into the foundation charter."
Isabella placed the envelope onto the glass table, sliding it toward Nicholas.
"The trust funds cannot be unlocked by Elena alone. Nor can they be claimed by Lucy Santos. They require the living biometric authorization of Victor Caruso’s firstborn son. You, Nicholas."
Suddenly, the heavy steel door of the vault groaned.
Nicholas reacted instantly, spinning on his heel with his hand dropping to his sidearm.
Standing in the vault doorway, drenched in river mud, clutching an iron tire iron with his one good arm, was Victor Caruso. But he wasn't looking at Nicholas.
Victor was staring past him, his eyes wild with a terror far deeper than anything Nicholas had seen in the culvert.
Behind Victor, emerging from the dark corridor of the sub-basement, came the sound of rhythmic, elegant footsteps.
The click of high heels on cold granite.
A tall woman in an ivory cashmere coat stepped into the threshold of the vault. Her hair was silvered at the temples, her posture imperious, her face bearing the exact, terrifying arch of Nicholas’s own jawline.
In her right hand, she held a silenced automatic pistol.
In her left, she held a small silver ring—the twin to the one Isabella wore.
She stepped over the threshold, looked at Victor with an expression of cold disgust, then turned her pale, piercing eyes directly onto Nicholas.
"You grew up looking just like your father, Nicholas," the woman said, her voice smooth, melodic, and completely devoid of warmth. "Put the gun on the table, darling. Or Isabella will detonate the thermite charges Arthur planted beneath this room twenty years ago."
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Isabella didn't move. Her fingers slowly slipped into her jacket pocket, resting against the small black transmitter hidden in the lining.
Behind Nicholas, the electronic locks of the Morning Vault clicked, sealing the four of them inside forty feet of solid rock.
