Chapter 7 - The Bloodline
Peter froze, his boots planted on the salt-stained deck.
From the dark, barnacle-covered shadows beneath the wooden pilings, Evan Lee stepped out onto the low-tide sandbar, his weapon held in a two-handed combat stance, his drenched tuxedo dripping black mud into the freezing harbor water.
Beside him, Claire Morgan advanced with the smooth, terrifying efficiency of an apex hunter, her Glock leveled dead at the chest of the contractor holding Daniel.
"Evan?" Grace whispered, her hand trembling so violently the black hard drive nearly slipped from her fingers.
"Put the gun down, Peter," Evan said. His voice was no longer that of a corporate chairman or a bewildered groom. It was completely hollowed out, cold as the deep North Atlantic water lapping around his ankles.
Peter didn't lower his weapon. A bitter, twisted smile touched the corners of his mouth. "You shouldn't have come down here, Evan. You should have stayed under your mother’s arch. You were supposed to be the clean one. The son who didn't have to look at the bodies."
"There are no clean ones in my family, are there?" Evan said, advancing up the wooden ramp that led from the sandbar to the floating dock. "My father was a murderer. My mother is a monster. And you're the dog that cleans up the bone pile."
"I kept your father out of prison so you could attend Harvard!" Peter shouted, his voice cracking with twenty years of buried resentment. "I buried three building inspectors so your family could build that glass tower on Boylston Street! You think you're better than me, Evan? Every dollar you ever spent on those custom suits was paid for by the men I put in the ground!"
"Evan, don't listen to him!" Grace cried. "Get out of here! He’s going to kill you too! Eleanor told him not to leave witnesses!"
Evan stopped at the edge of the floating dock, twenty feet from the bow of the *Marauder*. He looked at Grace.
Really looked at her.
He saw the torn silk. He saw the bruise blooming across her cheekbone. He saw the desperate, defiant pride that he had mistaken for gentle vulnerability for two whole years. She hadn't loved him for his money. She hadn't even truly hated him. She had pitied him—the golden prince who lived in a glass cage built on the corpses of her family’s dignity.
"Grace," Evan said softly, his eyes never leaving hers. "Did you love me? Even for a day?"
Grace’s chest hitched. A single tear cut a clean path through the salt on her face. "I tried to hate you, Evan. Every morning I woke up next to you, I told myself that you were the monster’s son. But you weren't him. You were kind. You were gentle. And that’s what broke my heart... because I knew that to save my brother, I was going to have to burn your whole world to the ground."
"Then burn it," Evan said.
Peter Cho’s eyes widened in sudden, stark comprehension. "Evan, no—"
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Evan fired.
***
