Chapter 8
By eleven o'clock, the mansion was an echoing cavern of stripped walls and bare floors.
The oil paintings had been crated; the silver had been locked into secure vaults; the Persian rugs had been rolled and loaded into the convoy of trucks. Only a single emergency lamp remained in the grand foyer, casting long, skeletal shadows across the empty marble floor.
Elfrida sat on the bottom step of the staircase, two scuffed leather suitcases resting beside her feet. Her face was pale, hollowed out by exhaustion and fear. Across from her, Uncle Bartholomew sat on a wooden packing crate, clutching his silver cane, his chin sunk into his chest like a condemned prisoner awaiting the guillotine.
The front door groaned on its hinges.
Lysander walked back inside, holding an unsealed manila envelope in his gloved hand. He tossed the envelope into Elfrida’s lap.
She looked down at it, her trembling fingers parting the flap. Inside were three plane tickets to an obscure regional airport in northern Maine, along with three debit cards linked to heavily restricted maintenance accounts.
"Two thousand dollars a month each," Lysander said, standing over them with his arms crossed over his chest. "Enough for a modest two-bedroom rental, groceries, and basic utilities. You will report to a regional administrator once a month. If either of you sets foot in New York, Connecticut, or New Jersey, the allowance terminates permanently."
Bartholomew looked up, tears glistening in his faded blue eyes. "Maine? Lysander... I am seventy years old. My doctors are in Manhattan. I can't live in the woods like an exile."
"You should have considered your health before you conspired to kidnap my daughter, old man," Lysander replied coldly.
Elfrida stared at the plane tickets, her hands beginning to shake with renewed, hysterical venom. "You think you're so untouchable, don't you? You think because you have the money and the muscle, you get to rewrite the truth?"
Lysander didn't blink. "The truth is whatever I say it is."
"No," Elfrida laughed, a bitter, broken sound that echoed off the high, bare ceiling. "The truth is in Zurich! I received an encrypted dispatch from Dominic Sterling’s private investigators this afternoon, Lysander. Before your thugs seized his ships!"
Lysander’s expression remained carved from stone, but his eyes sharpened. "Dominic Sterling is a dead man walking."
"He sent the clinic logs!" Elfrida cried, standing up and pointing a trembling, accusatory finger at his chest. "Clara’s medical intake file in Zurich! Effie was born six weeks premature, Lysander! And during the conception window, you were in Singapore brokering the Straits port agreement for three solid months! She didn't conceive that child with you!"
Bartholomew gasped, reaching out to grab Elfrida’s skirt. "Elfrida, stop! Be quiet!"
"Let him hear it!" she screamed, her face contorting with triumphant madness. "The great Lysander Farrow, ruthless boss of the eastern seaboard, raising another man’s bastard! Who was the father, Lysander? Was it one of Clara’s European financiers? Or was it Dominic Sterling himself?!"
Lysander did not move. He did not roar in fury. He did not strike her again.
He simply stood there, his dark overcoat motionless, his breathing slow and steady. But the look in his eyes made Elfrida’s triumphant laughter choke in her throat. The room grew colder than a crypt.
"Are you finished?" Lysander asked quietly.
Elfrida swallowed hard, the bravado evaporating as raw terror flooded back into her veins. "I... I have the documents on a secure flash drive."
Lysander took a step forward, reached out, and gently tapped the side of her swollen cheek with his signet ring. The cold metal made her flinch violently.
May you like
"Effie has Clara’s eyes," Lysander said, every syllable measured like a funeral bell. "She has my name. And she has my protection. If you ever utter that lie again, Elfrida, I will not send you to Maine. I will bury you beneath the concrete foundations of the Brooklyn pier."
Before she could speak, the distant crack of a high-caliber gunshot shattered the night outside.
