Chapter 7 - A Desperate Gambit
Before Marcus’s fingers could wrap around the plastic casing of the flash drive, I lunged forward with reckless, blind desperation, slamming my palm down onto the emergency power strip switch attached to the base of the console.
The server screen flickered violently and went pitch black. The room plunged into absolute darkness, save for the faint, pulsing amber light of the backup battery unit.
Marcus cursed fiercely, his hand swiping through empty air where the terminal had just been. "What the hell did you do?!" he snarled, spinning around in the dark to grab me, but my momentum carried me past him, my heels clacking furiously against the floor as I sprinted out of the alcove and into the main corridor.
"Stop right there!" Marcus roared, his footsteps thundering behind me on the hardwood.
I didn't look back. My lungs felt like they were on fire, the heavy silk of the evening gown tangling around my ankles with every frantic stride. I turned the corner toward the grand staircase, knowing that if I led him toward the ballroom, I risked exposing Julian; but if I headed toward the service wing, I had a chance to reach the private elevator.
Suddenly, a motorized whir cut through the roar of my blood in my ears.
A pair of headlights swept across the polished marble floor near the base of the stairs. It was Julian. He wasn't waiting in the study—he had maneuvered his high-speed motorized wheelchair right into the lower foyer, blocking the path between the east corridor and the ballroom with grim, unyielding determination.
"Marcus!" Julian’s voice cracked like a whip through the open space, freezing my pursuer in his tracks.
Marcus skidded to a halt just ten feet behind me, breathing heavily, his dark hair disheveled. He stared down the grand staircase at his paralyzed stepbrother, a twisted, ugly grin spreading across his face.
"Well, look who finally decided to crawl out of his cage," Marcus mocked, stepping past me as if I were nothing more than a discarded piece of trash. He strolled slowly toward the base of the stairs, looking down at Julian with a mixture of pity and supreme contempt. "Did you miss the party, little brother? Or did you finally realize that no matter how many pathetic little nurses you hire to wipe your chin, you're still just a helpless cripple sitting in a rolling chair?"
Julian didn't flinch. His hands rested calmly on the armrests of his chair, but his gray eyes burned with a cold, terrifying fire that made even Marcus hesitate.
"You always were arrogant, Marcus," Julian said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "You thought because my legs didn't work, my mind stopped working too. You thought you inherited the kingdom."
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"I did inherit it," Marcus snapped, his smile fading as a flicker of genuine unease crossed his features. "Father signed the papers before he died. The board answers to me. The accounts belong to me. And whatever pathetic little game you and your little whore tried to play in the server room just now—" Marcus pointed a finger back toward the east corridor "—it's over."
"Is it?" Julian raised an eyebrow, tilting his head slightly. At that exact moment, every single light in the massive mansion flickered off, plunging the entire estate into total, pitch-black darkness.
