Chapter 6 - THE WOMAN BETWEEN SERENA AND THE CRIB
Victor stopped in the doorway.
Serena held Lily against her body with one arm locked around the nanny’s throat.
The syringe rested against the skin beneath Lily’s ear.
Ethan stood inside the crib holding the rail with his uninjured hand.
He began crying.
Serena looked thinner than she had in the mansion. Her red dress was gone. She wore stolen hospital scrubs beneath a long coat. Blood from the cut on her palm had soaked through one bandage.
“Close the door,” she said.
Victor did not move.
“Close it, or she stops breathing.”
Lily’s face had begun turning red beneath Serena’s arm.
Victor stepped into the room.
A federal tactical team waited beyond the corridor corner.
Serena knew they were there.
The window beside Ethan reflected part of the hallway.
“Everyone moves back,” she ordered.
Victor raised one hand.
“They are moving.”
“You always sound calm when someone else is bleeding.”
The sentence carried Elena’s voice behind it.
Serena had heard Victor’s wife say the same thing during arguments.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“The acknowledgment.”
“Charles Whitestone’s document?”
“And the original trust.”
“You cannot control the company with either.”
“I can prove Elena stole my inheritance.”
“Elena was preparing to acknowledge you publicly.”
“She was preparing to give me a fraction and call it justice.”
“She did not create what your father did.”
“She benefited from it.”
“So Ethan deserves a syringe?”
Serena’s expression tightened.
“Do not use him against me.”
“You injured him.”
“I created evidence.”
“He is a child.”
“He is a lock around everything that should have been mine.”
Ethan cried harder.
Lily tried to speak.
Serena pressed her arm tighter.
Victor’s breathing changed.
He wanted to cross the room.
He knew Serena wanted him moving fast enough for the syringe to enter Lily’s neck.
“What is inside it?” he asked.
“A sedative.”
“How much?”
“Enough.”
“To kill her?”
“Only if you delay.”
Victor looked at Lily.
Her eyes remained fixed on him.
Terrified.
Still thinking.
Her right hand rested against the side of her uniform.
The emergency button was two inches below her fingers.
Serena followed his gaze.
She pulled Lily away from it.
“You think servants become brave because powerful men finally notice them.”
Lily forced out a whisper.
“No.”
Serena looked down at her.
“What?”
“I was brave before he came home.”
The sentence struck Serena harder than an insult.
Lily had protected Ethan when she believed no one would rescue her.
Victor had arrived later.
Serena hated anything that existed beyond her power to grant or remove.
She drove the syringe closer.
Victor placed a document on the floor.
“The acknowledgment.”
Serena stared at it.
“Slide it.”
He did.
The paper stopped several feet away.
“Trust document too.”
“It is with federal investigators.”
“Then call them.”
“They will not exchange evidence.”
“You can make them.”
“No.”
Her arm tightened.
“You still think rules protect you.”
“No. I think the people outside need evidence to protect Ethan after this room.”
Serena laughed.
“You believe you will keep him?”
Victor looked toward the crib.
“I do not know.”
The honesty surprised her.
“I have admitted my organization used the shipping routes. I may be charged. A court will decide whether I remain his guardian.”
“You would surrender him?”
“I would surrender power before using him to protect it.”
Serena stared at him.
That was the choice she could not understand.
She had built every relationship around possession.
Victor had spent years doing something similar.
The difference was that he finally recognized it.
Serena loosened her grip for one second.
Lily dropped her weight.
Her knees bent beneath her.
Serena’s forearm slid upward.
Lily twisted toward the floor and struck the emergency button.
The room alarm sounded.
Serena drove the syringe downward.
Victor crossed the distance.
He caught her wrist before the needle reached Lily.
The movement was violent only in speed.
His grip stopped the syringe.
His other arm moved Lily behind him.
Serena fought.
Victor twisted the syringe from her hand and threw it across the room.
Federal agents entered.
Serena reached beneath her coat.
Victor saw the weapon first.
He struck her wrist against the bed rail.
A small pistol fell to the floor.
Agents forced Serena down and secured her hands.
Victor did not hit her after she stopped resisting.
He stood between her and Ethan.
Serena looked up from the floor.
“Elena would hate what you became.”
Victor’s face remained still.
“She did.”
The answer silenced her.
He had no need to transform his dead wife into unconditional approval.
Elena had loved him.
She had also feared the kind of man his power allowed him to become.
Victor picked Ethan up carefully.
The child pressed his face against his father.
Lily sat against the wall rubbing her throat.
A paramedic examined her.
“You saved him,” Victor said.
Lily shook her head.
“We both did.”
Serena was taken into federal custody.
The syringe contained a powerful sedative mixed with a medication capable of suppressing breathing.
The dose could have killed Lily.
Dr. Vale was found at the Lake Geneva property with a gunshot wound to his shoulder.
Serena had shot him after he refused to continue helping her.
He survived and immediately requested a cooperation agreement.
He admitted altering Elena’s medication, falsifying her death certificate, hiding Ethan’s rib fracture, and preparing false medical reports against Lily.
He also revealed why Serena had needed Marcus.
Marcus controlled a Blackwood emergency succession file.
If Victor died before Ethan turned two, Marcus would temporarily manage the criminal organization.
Serena expected to control Whitestone through Ethan.
Marcus expected to control Blackwood through Victor’s death.
Their partnership would end with each holding half of the empire.
Neither planned to share for long.
Marcus had arranged Victor’s death for the night of the wedding.
A bomb would be placed inside Victor’s armored vehicle after the reception.
The explosion would be blamed on a rival organization.
Serena would become Ethan’s guardian.
Marcus would become acting leader.
The child would inherit everything while the two conspirators controlled every decision around him.
The plan did not begin with Ethan’s arm.
It began before Elena’s crash.
Serena and Marcus had been attempting to erase both parents one at a time.
Rachel received a final file from federal investigators.
Marcus’s phone contained a list of household employees scheduled for removal after the wedding.
Lily appeared first.
Beside her name was one instruction.
ACCIDENT IN SERVICE STAIRWELL.
The nursery camera confession was never meant to send Lily to prison.
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It was meant to discredit her before Marcus killed her.
Continue to the next part: Lily learns that Serena planned to murder her after using her as the false explanation for Ethan’s injuries.
