Chapter 10 - The Reckoning
The heavy iron edge of the spade connected with the side of Marcus’s head with a sickening, hollow crack that echoed through the quiet evening air like a gunshot.
Marcus didn't even make a sound. His eyes rolled back instantly, his knees buckled beneath him, and he collapsed sideways onto the asphalt like a felled tree, his body coming to rest just inches from my feet. The small black USB flash drive slipped from his limp fingers, rolling across the pavement until it bumped gently against my sneaker.
I lay frozen on the ground, my breath hitching in my throat as I stared in sheer horror at the motionless form of Marcus Vance sprawled out on the driveway, a dark pool of blood beginning to pool rapidly beneath his head.
Victoria stood over him, her chest heaving, her hands gripping the wooden handle of the spade so tightly her knuckles were stark white. She wasn't crying. She wasn't screaming anymore. A chilling, vacant smile spread slowly across her pale face as she stared down at her unconscious husband.
"He thought he was so smart," Victoria whispered to herself, her voice a soft, rhythmic chant in the eerie twilight. "He thought he could control everything. Control the house, control the money, control me."
Slowly, her wild gaze shifted down from Marcus and landed directly on me, still pinned against the asphalt beneath the shadow of the security gate.
My heart hammered against my ribs with the force of a panic attack. I instinctively scrambled backward on my hands and knees, my fingers frantically brushing against the smooth plastic casing of the USB flash drive resting against my shoe. I scooped it up in a flash, clutching it tight in my fist, and scrambled to my feet, keeping my eyes locked on Victoria like a cornered animal facing a predator.
"Victoria..." I breathed out, my voice trembling so badly the words were barely audible. "Please... I'm not your enemy. I just want to leave."
Victoria tilted her head, her eyes scanning me up and down with an unnerving, clinical detachment. The frantic madness in her expression seemed to recede for a fraction of a second, replaced by something far more frightening—a calm, calculating resolve.
"You have the drive, don't you, Elena?" she asked softly, taking a slow step toward me.
"I... yes," I stammered, backing away until my shoulders hit the cold iron bars of the pedestrian gate. My fingers searched frantically behind me for the latch, praying against hope that it had an internal release.
"Good," Victoria said, to my utter astonishment, stopping five feet away and lowering the heavy iron spade to the ground with a dull thud. She looked down at Marcus’s unconscious body, then back up at me, a dark, conspiratorial glint in her eyes. "Because Marcus was right about one thing: he killed Chloe. He pushed her off that balcony because she found out about his offshore accounts, about the embezzled funds, about everything. He tried to pin it all on my mental illness so he could institutionalize me and take full custody of Leo."
She took one more step closer, her voice dropping to an urgent, conspiratorial whisper.
"If you want to walk out of these gates alive, Elena, and if you want to make sure that monster never hurts another soul, you aren't going to call the police," Victoria said, her eyes boring straight into my soul with terrifying intensity. "You're going to take that flash drive straight to the federal precinct downtown. And you're going to tell them that Victoria Vance is ready to finally tell the whole truth about what happened in this house."
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Before I could answer, the distant wail of police sirens suddenly pierced the evening air, growing louder and closer by the second, flashing red and blue lights painting the trees at the end of the long driveway.
I looked down at the flash drive clutched tightly in my hand, then back at Victoria standing in the twilight over her fallen husband, realizing with absolute certainty that the nightmare inside the Vance estate was only just beginning.
