Chapter 3 - The First Execution
Raul dropped to his knees. The wealthy, arrogant chairman of Sterling Financial—a man who had spent his entire life stepping on the poor and middle class of Westridge—was now sobbing openly, his hands clutching the hem of Gabriel Vance’s tailored trousers.
“General! Please! I didn't know!” Raul shrieked, his voice cracking with pure, unadulterated terror. “We didn't know she was your granddaughter! Victor didn't know! If we had known, we would have treated her like a queen! We would have given her everything! Please, General, we are business partners! We hold three secondary supply contracts with your defense network!”
Gabriel looked down at Raul with the same expression a man might give an insect he was about to step on.
“You held three contracts, Raul,” Gabriel corrected calmly. “As of forty seconds ago, my executive board executed the contingency clause. Your firm’s lines of credit have been completely frozen across all thirty-two international exchanges. Your corporate accounts in Zurich, Nassau, and London have been seized under federal national security emergency protocols. By noon today, your company will be seventy million dollars in debt, and your stock will be delisted from every exchange in North America.”
“No!” Victor yelled, finally breaking out of his paralysis. He took a wild, aggressive step toward Gabriel, his fists clenched. “You can’t do that! She’s my wife! Under state domestic law, I have rights! I have legal custody of that baby!”
Gabriel didn't even raise his walking stick.
The head of the tactical detail—a massive, scarred operator known as Commander Cross—stepped forward in a flash of motion. Cross caught Victor by his throat with one gloved hand, slammed him backward against the granite island, and drove a combat knife through Victor’s right shoulder, pinning him directly to the wooden cabinetry behind him.
Victor let out a high-pitched, gurgling scream of pain as blood flooded his white designer shirt, his boots kicking uselessly against the air as he hung pinned to his own kitchen island.
“VICTOR!” Helena shrieked, falling over her chair as she tried to reach her son.
Nora dropped her iPhone. The device struck the tile floor, its screen shattering instantly, just like mine had ten minutes prior. She backed into the corner near the pantry, her body shaking so violently her knees knocked together, tears ruining her expensive morning makeup.
Gabriel walked slowly over to where Nora’s phone lay on the floor. He used the tip of his titanium walking stick to flip the device face-up.
“Pick it up,” Gabriel ordered Nora.
Nora sobbed, her hand flying to her mouth. “P-please... sir... I didn't hit her... I was just—"
“PICK IT UP!” Gabriel roared.
Nora scrambled onto her hands and knees, grabbing the broken iPhone with trembling, bloody fingers and holding it up to Gabriel like a sacrificial offering.
Gabriel took the phone, looked at the red recording icon that was still actively running, and tapped the screen to stop the video. He saved the file directly to his secure cloud network before dropping the phone onto the floor and crushing it into powder beneath the heel of his heavy boot.
“You filmed my granddaughter while she was being beaten,” Gabriel said, staring into Nora’s terrified eyes. “You laughed while your brother struck a pregnant woman with a mahogany cane.”
He turned to Commander Cross.
“Ensure Miss Nora Sterling is placed on the international human trafficking red-flag registry by noon,” Gabriel commanded coldly. “Cancel her passport. Freeze her secondary trust accounts. Notify every elite university in the Western Hemisphere that her academic credentials have been flagged for fraud. If she steps foot on an airplane or attempts to enter a high-society establishment anywhere on earth, have her arrested for criminal conspiracy.”
Nora let out a strangled gasp, collapsing flat onto her face on the kitchen floor, weeping hysterically as her entire future was erased in three sentences.
The two combat medics finished securing my stretcher.
“General, we have a stable heartbeat from the infant,” the lead medic reported urgently. “But her maternal vitals are dropping fast. She has internal bleeding from the trauma to her lower body. We need to air-evacuate her to the Vance Medical Center immediately.”
Gabriel immediately turned back toward the medics, all interest in the Sterling family vanishing instantly. “Move her to the roof pad. Tell the flight crew we fly in thirty seconds.”
As they began wheeling my stretcher out of the shattered kitchen, Gabriel walked beside me, holding my left hand gently in his leather-clad grip.
Victor was still pinned to the granite counter by the combat knife through his shoulder, his face white from blood loss, his breath coming in shallow, desperate gasps.
“Gabriel...” Victor wheezed, his eyes rolling back in his head as he looked at my grandfather. “Please... don't... kill me...”
Gabriel stopped at the door, turning his head slightly to look back at my husband over his wool coat shoulder.
“Kill you?” Gabriel asked, his voice echoing off the high, hollow ceilings of the mansion. “Death is a mercy, Victor. Death is for men who fight honorably. For a coward who strikes a pregnant woman... death is too quick.”
Gabriel looked at Commander Cross.
“Lock the gates from the outside,” Gabriel commanded. “Disable the power grid. Cut off the municipal water supply. Strip their personal vehicles of all ignition systems. Leave them in this house with nothing but the clothes on their backs and the debt I have placed around their necks. Let the bank bailiffs find them when they come to auction the furniture tomorrow morning.”
“Understood, General,” Cross replied, drawing his sidearm and standing guard at the threshold.
As my stretcher was rolled out onto the front lawn toward the massive grey Sikorsky helicopter idling on the grass, I looked up through the clear plastic oxygen mask at the morning sky. The sun was just beginning to rise over the hills of Westridge, casting a long, golden light across the landscape.
For eighteen months, I had lived in total, suffocating darkness.
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I had allowed myself to believe that endurance was strength, that surviving abuse was my only duty as a wife. But as the heavy twin rotors of my grandfather’s helicopter began to beat against the morning air, lifting us high above the decaying Sterling estate, I knew that the quiet, submissive girl was officially dead.
And the heiress of the Vance empire had finally come home.
