Julian’s fists clenched until the bones in his knuckles protested, but he did not lay a finger on her. He knew precisely what she was doing. The cameras might be disconnected, but Bianca was a creature of calculated traps. She wanted him to assault her; she wanted a criminal record on him to file an emergency injunction tomorrow morning.
“And Clara?” Julian asked, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. “What did you do to my wife?”
Bianca’s smirk widened, exposing straight, bleached teeth. “Clara was soft. Just like you. She found out what Camille was embezzling from the overseas logistics contracts. Three hundred million dollars, Julian! Right under your nose! Clara was going to tell you. So Camille paid for a little mechanical alteration to Clara’s steering column.”
Bianca leaned forward, her eyes dancing with psychotic delight. “And I was the one who cut the brake lines, Julian. I was the valet at the charity gala that night. You tipped me fifty dollars when I brought Clara’s car around. You didn’t even look at my face.”
Julian felt the room spin. The memory flashed violently in his mind: the torrential rain three years ago, handing his black titanium credit card and a folded fifty-dollar bill to a female attendant in a peaked cap, kissing Clara goodbye on the cheek…
*Fifty dollars.* He had handed his wife’s executioner the tip for her murder.
A guttural roar ripped from Julian’s chest, but before he could cross the distance, his phone vibrated violently against his chest. He ripped it from his tuxedo pocket.
It was Dr. Harrison, the Vance family’s chief medical officer at Presbyterian Hospital.
“Julian!” Dr. Harrison’s voice was breathless, panicked. “Your mother survived the transit, but her vitals are crashing. We ran a rapid blood panel per your orders. Her bloodstream is flooded with digitalis glycosides! Her potassium is through the roof. If we don’t administer the neutralizing antibodies within forty-five minutes, she will suffer irreversible cardiac arrest!”
“Then give her the antibodies!” Julian shouted.
“We can’t!” Harrison cried out, genuine despair in his tone. “Someone purged the hospital pharmacy’s stock of Digifab two hours ago! The regional distribution center in Queens is reporting their supply was destroyed by an intentional chemical spill! Julian… it’s a coordinated sabotage. Someone deliberately cut off the antidote for the entire tri-state area!”
Julian turned his gaze toward Bianca.
Bianca tilted her head, her smile triumphant, utterly venomous. She reached into her silver designer clutch, pulled out a small, glass vial filled with clear liquid, and held it up between two fingers.
“Looking for this, darling?” she purred. “Five doses of pure Digifab. The only surviving batch within two hundred miles.”
Julian’s jaw tightened. “What do you want?”
“The study,” Bianca whispered, her eyes flashing with greedy fire. “You’re going to walk me into your private study. You’re going to open the safe. You’re going to hand me the Blue Box, along with the signed transfer of the North Atlantic shipping shares. You give me the box, and your mother gets to live. You have thirty-eight minutes, Julian. Tick, tock.”
The heavy rain began to pound against the arched glass roof of the Vance estate, mimicking the relentless clock ticking down inside Julian’s mind.
Thirty-five minutes.
Julian did not hesitate. “Get in the car.”
“Oh, we’re not taking your armored Maybach with your private driver, Julian,” Bianca sneered, slipping the vial of Digifab back into her clutch and pulling a compact .22 caliber pistol from the lining of her silver coat. “You’re driving my coupe. Just the two of us. If I see a single security tail, I will smash this vial on the asphalt, and you can listen to your mother flatline over the speakerphone.”
Julian’s face was an emotionless mask of granite. “Done.”
Within three minutes, the sleek black sports coupe tore out of the estate gates, spraying gravel into the darkness, racing toward the Vance family’s ancestral brownstone in the Upper East Side. Manhattan blurred past the rain-streaked windows—neon signs, rushing yellow cabs, and towering skyscrapers reflecting in the dark puddles.
Julian drove with lethal precision, his hands steady on the leather steering wheel, his mind calculating every variable with cold, algorithmic speed. Underneath his cufflink, a microscopic GPS transponder was already broadcasting their telemetry directly to Marcus.
“You’re surprisingly quiet, Julian,” Bianca mocked from the passenger seat, the small barrel of the gun pressed firmly against his ribs. “No tears for your precious mother? No curses for your sweet, backstabbing sister?”
“Camille was always weak,” Julian replied coldly, his eyes fixed on the rain-swept avenue. “She gambled away her inheritance in Monaco before she was twenty-five. I covered her debts three times. I assumed she was just incompetent. I didn’t realize she was malicious.”
