I walked to the head of the table.
I stood beside where he lay pinned.
I did not strike his cheek.
I did not raise my voice.
I reached into my coat pocket, pulled out the worn, velvet-ribboned ear of Sofia’s stuffed rabbit that had torn loose during Chloe’s assault in the living room:
I laid the small scrap of faded pink cloth flat across the nape of Arthur Vance’s silver neck:
TINK.
“The family name was never yours to steal, Arthur,” Alexander Vance whispered softly.
Every syllable fell like an un-appealable epitaph that sealed forty years of dynastic treason into solid rock forever:
“Arthur Mercer surveyed with honest stone.”
“Valeria and Sofia live with honest love.”
“And around here…”
I leaned down until my clear slate-gray eyes filled the Chief Justice’s entire field of vision:
“…nobody ever, ever… touches my daughters again.”
CLICK-CLACK.
The two federal marshals hauled Chief Justice Arthur Sterling-Vance to his feet by his armpits, marching him down the greenstone corridor in waist-chains and leg-irons toward the armored transport BearCats waiting on the East Front Plaza:
SCREEECH.
Behind him were marched his clerk and the corporate executives, their designer shoes dragging through the drywall dust on the floorboards, leaving long, jagged, gray streaks across the stone as they were hauled toward the waiting tactical vans:
CRASH-ROAR-PANT.
The heavy four-inch blast doors of the West Conference Room closed behind them with an authoritative, airtight, pneumatic THUD.
The vault returned to silence.
The only sound left was the clean, cool sixty-cycle hum of the ventilation ducts, the steady breathing of Admiral Mercer beside me, and the rhythmic tack… tack… tack of my father’s chronometer watch on my wrist.
***
