Chapter 20 - The Edge of the Abyss
Eleanor fell to her knees in the dust, clutching her bleeding shoulder with a trembling, liver-spotted hand.
The fire department trucks breached the outer gates, instantly spraying high-pressure foam onto the flames and securing the propane tanks.
Dozens of state troopers and federal agents swarmed the perimeter, pinning Eleanor’s hired guards to the ground.
Luca held me tightly against him, shielding my face from the flying ash as the chaos stabilized.
I pushed gently away from his chest and walked toward the kneeling matriarch.
Eleanor looked up at me from the dirt, defeated, broken, and stripped of every illusion of nobility.
Her silver falcon cane lay splintered on the ground beside her.
"It’s over, Eleanor," I said softly, looking down at her without an ounce of pity.
"Ryan is in a state penitentiary."
"You are going to a federal supermax facility."
"And when the dawn comes, the workers will clear this rubble and finish building the hospital."
"Your name will be forgotten, but mine will be carved into every stone of this city."
Eleanor’s breath was shallow, but her lips curled into a sickening, blood-streaked grin.
"You think... you think Ryan was the one who found you eight years ago, Claire?" she whispered, coughing weakly.
The words struck me like ice water.
I stopped breathing for a fraction of a second.
"What did you say?" I asked, taking a step closer.
"Ryan didn't pick you out of a crowd in Chicago by chance," Eleanor rasped, her eyes burning with a terrifying, dying amusement.
"He was ordered to marry you."
"He was ordered to keep you docile, broke, and blinded."
"Your real father didn't die in that plane crash twenty years ago, darling."
"He's been watching you from the shadows the entire time."
"And he was the one who funded Ryan’s entire setup just to keep you under surveillance."
My world tilted on its axis.
The ground beneath my feet felt as if it had vanished completely.
"Who is he?!" I demanded, grabbing Eleanor by the lapel of her ruined coat.
"Tell me his name!"
Eleanor opened her mouth to speak, her eyes widening as if about to deliver the final killing blow.
Before a single syllable could escape her lips, the sharp, deafening crack of a high-caliber sniper rifle shattered the desert air from the distant ridge.
A bullet tore through the darkness.
Eleanor’s body jerked violently as a crimson bloom exploded across her chest.
"Sniper! Get down!" Luca screamed, tackling me to the gravel as a second shot pinged off the steel wreckage inches from my head.
Chaos erupted again, agents firing blindly into the distant black hills as red laser sights danced across the smoking ruins.
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Luca held me down with his entire body, his voice shouting orders into his radio, his heart pounding violently against mine.
In the dirt inches from my face, Eleanor Bennett drew her final, rattling breath, taking the identity of my true enemy into the eternal dark.
