Chapter 9 - The Midnight Raid on Vance Manor: Stealing Back Our Stolen Legacy
At 5:45 AM, the fog over the Vance Manor gardens was as dense as a shroud.
Julian’s private mercenaries were stationed at the perimeter gates, but they were amateurs compared to Mason’s fifteen years of tactical preparation. Using an electromagnetic pulse jammer, Mason disabled the estate’s secondary perimeter sensors for thirty seconds—just enough time for us to slip through the rose garden arboretum and enter through the cellar storm doors.
We moved silently up the servants' staircase, completely undetected, until we reached the master suite.
The door was unlocked.
Inside, Chloe was sitting at the vanity table, her face puffy and stained with mascara, staring blankly at a legal contract on the glass surface. Julian had already left for the Richmond financial district to prep the foreign investors.
I stepped through the shadows of the heavy velvet drapes.
“You always did look terrible in silk, Chloe.”
Chloe froze. Her reflection in the mirror caught my image standing behind her.
Her scream was cut short before it could leave her throat as Mason stepped into the room, locking the door behind him and disabling the room’s internal intercom with a pocket frequency blocker.
Chloe spun around in her chair, knocking over perfume bottles that shattered across the mahogany floor. She fell backward onto the rug, scrambling away in absolute, unadulterated terror, her eyes wide as dinner plates.
“V-Valerie…?! Mason…?!” she shrieked, hyperventilating so hard her chest heaved violently. “No… no, no, no… you’re dead! Julian saw the car sink! The divers found your purse!”
“Julian is an arrogant idiot who couldn't even ensure his own murder plot was executed properly,” I said, stepping forward, the heels of my combat boots clicking sharply on the floorboards.
Chloe looked from me to Mason. When she saw Mason standing tall, towering over her with broad shoulders and cold, steady eyes, she completely lost her mind.
“You’re… you’re walking… you were faking it… all these years…?” she stammered, curling into a ball against the vanity legs. “Please… please don't kill me! It was Julian! He forced me! He said he would take everything from me if I didn't help him!”
“Shut up, Chloe,” Mason said, his voice like iron grinding against stone. “Save your pathetic lies for someone who didn't watch you put the GPS tracker on Valerie’s SUV.”
Chloe choked on her own breath, realizing she was completely exposed.
I pulled the Johns Hopkins DNA report from my jacket and tossed it into her lap.
“Read it,” I commanded.
Chloe looked down at the document with trembling fingers. “What… what is this?”
“That is the biological truth your mother hid from you,” I said, looking down at her with a mixture of pity and utter disgust. “You spent your entire life hating Valerie and me because you thought our father treated you like a second-class bastard. But Thomas Vance was never your father, Chloe.”
Chloe’s eyes scanned the genetic markers, the hospital seals, and the name Arthur Sterling.
“No…” she whimpered, shaking her head in violent denial. “No… this is a fake… this is a lie!”
“Arthur Sterling used your mother and cast her aside,” Mason said mercilessly. “You aren't a Vance. You are a Sterling. Julian is your biological half-brother. And the child you are carrying is the product of his father’s bloodline.”
Chloe let out a sound that wasn't human—a guttural, broken wail of pure psychological devastation. The realization hit her like a freight train, shattering whatever delusion of grandeur and high-society romance she had constructed in her twisted mind. She dropped the papers, clutching her stomach as if she wanted to rip the reality out of her flesh.
“He… he knew…?” she choked out between violent sobs.
“Julian doesn't know yet,” I said, crouching down to her eye level. “Julian thinks you are just a disposable Vance heir he can discard in Portugal with three million dollars while he makes hundreds of millions off our parents’ corpses.”
Chloe looked up at me, her face pale, completely broken, stripped of all arrogance. “What… what do you want from me?”
“Redemption is impossible for you, Chloe,” I said coldly. “But survival is still on the table. You are going to sign the real legal revocation of your executorship right now. And tonight at the gala, when Julian hands you the pen to sign over Vance Shipyard in front of the cameras… you are going to follow our script word for word.”
“And if I don't?” she sobbed.
May you like
Mason leaned down, his voice chillingly calm. “If you don't, we will leave this room. And we will let Julian’s mercenaries take you to that freighter at Berth 7 tonight. Because you know too much, Chloe. And Julian never leaves loose ends alive.”
Chloe scrambled for the pen on the floor, weeping uncontrollably. “I’ll do it! I’ll do whatever you want! Just don't let him kill me!”
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