Chapter 8 - The Bloodline Ledger
The air in the room seemed to freeze.
Vincent stared at me, his gaze dropping to the leather ledger and the parchment papers clutched in my hands. A dark realization flickered across his aged features, followed immediately by a cruel, mocking chuckle.
"Ah," Vincent whispered, shaking his head. "The resemblance is truly unfortunate. I told the adoption agency to bury those files deeper. But blood has a way of seeping through the floorboards, doesn't it?"
Dominic’s body went completely rigid beside me. I could feel the intense heat radiating off him, the barely contained fury of a man whose entire world had just been upended.
"You didn't just steal a family, Vincent," Dominic said, his voice dropping into a terrifying, lethal hum. "You stole her life."
"I protected the family," Vincent hissed back, taking another step forward, his hand sliding toward the inner pocket of his coat. "Just like I'm going to protect it now. Men like us, Dominic, we don't get to have clean hands. And we certainly don't get to let outsiders walk out of this house with forty years of incriminating evidence."
He nodded slightly to the guards flanking him.
Leo didn't wait for them to raise their barrels. With blinding speed, Leo dropped to one knee, sweeping his leg out in a low, vicious arc that caught the left guard behind the knees, sending him crashing hard onto the hardwood floor.
At the exact same moment, Dominic lunged forward, closing the distance between himself and Vincent with terrifying momentum.
A suppressed firearm coughed twice in the dim parlor light, the bullets punching holes into the plaster wall just inches above my head.
"Clara, run!" Dominic roared, wrestling Vincent’s hand away from a heavy brass candlestick on the side table as the second guard swung his weapon around.
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I didn't run.
Adrenaline—sharp, hot, and blinding—overtook the terror. Remembering the heavy iron poker I had left leaning against the marble column in the foyer just down the hall, I spun around and bolted out of the parlor, the leather ledger clutched like a shield against my chest.
