Chapter 17 - The Judgment of the Compact
"I knew from the moment you attended my father’s funeral with tears in your eyes and his gold watch in your pocket," Nora said, standing up from her chair.
The movement was fluid, regal, and terrifyingly final.
Every eye in the warehouse was fixed on her. The regional barons—men who had killed and conspired for thirty years—held their breath as the twenty-seven-year-old woman descended the wooden steps of the platform, her heels clicking against the concrete floor.
She stopped five feet from Victor Sterling.
Victor stood frozen. His eight armed bodyguards, realizing that their leverage was gone and that they were surrounded by sixty armed dockworkers and cartel lieutenants, slowly laid their weapons on the floor, raising their hands in surrender.
Thomas Croft dropped the useless detonator. Julian Vance moved forward, kicking the plastic switch away and pinning Croft’s arms behind his back with brutal efficiency.
Victor was left entirely alone.
"You killed my father," Nora said, her voice dropping so low that only Victor and the men closest to them could hear. "You stole his life’s work. You turned his empire into an open market for petty thugs like Cole Maddox. And you believed that because I was a woman, because I stayed quiet, I would simply disappear into the archives of history."
"Nora..." Victor’s voice was barely a rasp. "We can settle this. The accounts in Zurich... there are seventy million dollars in bearer bonds that only I have the access codes to. I will give them to you. Every single cent. Just give me a car and let me cross the border into Canada."
Nora looked at Malcolm Devereux. "Malcolm."
"Yes, Miss Bellamy?"
"What is the penalty under the Bellamy Compact for high treason and the murder of a sovereign?"
Malcolm stepped forward, his eyes burning with twelve years of suppressed fury. "Death. By drowning in the harbor his treason disgraced."
Victor stumbled backward, his knees buckling, but two of Elias Winter’s enforcers seized him by the arms, holding him upright.
"No!" Victor screamed, struggling against the iron grip of the men holding him. "You can't do this! You're civilized! Samuel wouldn't have done this!"
"My father is dead, Victor," Nora said, her voice ice-cold. "I am the one you have to answer to."
She turned her back on him, walking back toward the platform.
"Take him away," Nora commanded.
"Nora! Nora, please!" Victor shrieked, his shoes dragging against the concrete as the enforcers hauled him toward the rear exit where a windowless black van waited. "Nora, you don't know everything! There are others! Others in Washington! Others in London! You won't survive them without me!"
Nora reached the platform and turned, looking down at the thrashing old man who had cast a shadow over her entire life.
"I will find them, Victor," she said calmly. "And when I do, I will tell them you sent me."
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The warehouse doors slammed shut behind Victor Sterling, cutting off his screams forever.
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