Chapter 7 - The Confrontation
The dining room fell into a suffocating, absolute silence. The ambient noise of silverware against porcelain vanished in an instant.
Silas Vance’s smirk faltered for a fraction of a second, but his veteran composure quickly recovered. "I arrived at 11:30 PM, Ronan. Right after the alarm was tripped at the perimeter gate. You know this. It was in my official report."
"Yes," Ronan murmured, swirling the dark red wine in his glass. "Your official report. The one that said the garage security cameras suffered a power glitch between 11:00 PM and 11:15 PM."
"It was an electrical storm, Ronan," Silas insisted smoothly. "The primary generator lagged."
"It wasn't an electrical storm, Silas," I spoke up, my voice cutting through the silent room like a razor blade.
Every eye at the table snapped to me. June Callaway dropped a bottle of expensive Cabernet, the dark liquid splashing across the Persian carpet like blood.
"What did you say, girl?" Silas growled, his hand instinctively dropping toward his jacket where his concealed firearm rested.
"The generator didn't lag," I said, stepping out from behind Evelyn's wheelchair, pulling the decoded ledger sheet from my pocket and placing it flat on the mahogany table in front of Ronan. "The security feed was manually overridden using a master administrative code. The same code that opened Vault 4 at the northern lighthouse to transfer ten million dollars in stolen maritime shipping routes to the Boston syndicate."
Silas’s face drained of all color. "You crazy little maid... who do you think you are?!"
"She is Maya Sterling," Ronan said, his voice dropping an octave into pure, unadulterated menace as he picked up the paper and read the decoded words written in his dead brother's handwriting. "A senior cryptographic analyst... and the woman my brother loved."
Silas realized in a split second that the trap had snapped shut.
With blinding speed, Silas drew his hand gun, aiming it straight at Ronan’s head. "Don't move! Any of you!"
The dining room erupted into chaos as lieutenants scrambled back from the table. June screamed, backing into the sideboard.
"You should have stayed buried, Maya!" Silas snarled, shifting his weapon toward my chest. "I killed Julian because he was too weak to run this empire, and I'll kill you and the old woman before I let you take what I earned!"
"You didn't earn anything, Silas," a voice rang out—loud, clear, and rich with authority.
Evelyn Cain stood up from her wheelchair.
The entire room froze in absolute shock.
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The woman who had been considered a catatonic mute for four years stood erect, her posture regal, her eyes flashing with majestic, lethal fury as she stared down the man who had murdered her son.
"You are a thief, a coward, and a murderer," Evelyn declared, her voice resounding off the high ceilings of Raven Hill. "And my family is done letting you bleed us."
