Chapter 20 - Bloodlines Collide
Alexander swung me around as a human shield, pressing the cold steel of his Kimber against my temple. “One step closer, Julian, and her brains decorate the glass!”
Julian froze. The iron bar lowered slightly, his knuckles white, muscles trembling under the agonizing strain of his wounds. The look in his eyes wasn’t defeat—it was the pure, suffocating agony of a man watching the only thing he loved in the world placed on the executioner’s block.
“Let her go, Alexander,” Julian breathed, his voice cracking. “You want the Vanderbilt codes. Ethan didn’t leave the master key with Maya. He left it with me.”
Alexander’s eyebrows arched in surprise. “You lie. Ethan hated you.”
“He hated our father,” Julian replied, taking a slow, calculated half-step forward. “He trusted me because I spent six years protecting his daughter before she died. Maya’s locket is just an encrypted shell. The physical bypass cipher is inside my watch. Take it. Take the money, take Blackwood Ridge, take everything. Just let Elena walk out that door.”
Alexander stared at him, greed warring with suspicion in his pale eyes. Four billion dollars. The entire power structure of the syndicate hung on that single code.
“Slide the watch across the floor,” Alexander ordered, his grip on my neck loosening by a fraction of an inch as his attention drifted.
Julian slowly reached for the platinum watch on his left wrist, unbuckling the strap. As he did, his dark eyes met mine. There was a secret message in that gaze—a command I recognized instantly from the days we spent evading the syndicate’s hunters.
*Drop.*
Julian tossed the heavy watch toward Alexander’s feet. But instead of sliding, the watch caught the floor and bounced, triggering a blinding magnesium flare embedded within its casing.
A burst of brilliant white light erupted between us.
“Now!” Julian shouted.
May you like
I slammed my heel down onto Alexander’s foot with all the weight in my body and threw my head backward into his nose. Cartilage crunched. Alexander howled in pain, stumbling back as the blinding light burned his retinas.
Julian moved with the ferocity of a hurricane.