Chapter 36 - The Broken Doll’s Bargain
"Chloe, don't do it!" I yelled into the dashboard speaker, my knuckles turning white as I fought the steering wheel against the drifting snow. "Listen to me! Eleanor doesn't have offshore codes! She emptied Julian's trusts, she burned the estate, and she left you in that filthy motel to rot! She's using you as a distraction so she can cross the Canadian border!"
Chloe let out a cracked, hysterical sob, pressing the needle closer to the intravenous port feeding directly into Arthur’s central line. "You're lying! You always lie! You stole everything from me, Claire! You took my credit cards, my reputation, my fiancé! Look at me! Look at what I look like!"
Through the trembling phone camera, I could see the terrifying reality of what my sister had become: a hollow shell, driven insane by withdrawal, vanity, and the crushing realization that without wealth, she was completely invisible to the world.
"Chloe," Marcus's voice broke in, soft, measured, laced with an old brotherly warmth that made her pause. "Chloe, it’s Marcus. Remember when you were twelve? Remember who sat with you in the hospital when you broke your collarbone while Arthur and Eleanor were in Monaco? It wasn't your mother. It was Claire."
On the small screen, Chloe’s trembling hand faltered. Her bloodshot eyes flickered from Arthur’s terrified face toward the camera.
"Arthur isn't your father, Chloe," I said, my voice dropping into a steady, lethal truth. "And Eleanor isn't a mother. She murdered Arthur's firstborn daughter twenty-eight years ago in the cellar beneath the greenhouse. She bought me to replace her, and when I wasn't pliant enough, she raised you to be her weapon. If you inject that syringe, you take the fall for first-degree capital murder while Eleanor disappears into Europe."
"No... no, she said she loved me," Chloe whimpered, looking down at Arthur. The old man was wheezing violently, tears leaking from the corners of his eyes, his paralyzed fingers clawing weakly at the sheets. "She said I was her golden girl..."
"If you were her golden girl, why are you holding the syringe while she's five miles down the road in a getaway truck?" I demanded.
Suddenly, the door behind Chloe on the video feed swung open silently.
A figure stepped into the frame, rain-soaked, carrying an iron tire iron wrapped in rags.
Eleanor.
She hadn't fled north at all. She had doubled back, using Chloe as bait to ensure Arthur was completely isolated from hospital security.
"You talk too much, little puppet," Eleanor whispered behind Chloe.
Before Chloe could turn around, the heavy iron bar struck the side of her skull with a sickening crack. Chloe collapsed instantly out of frame, the glass syringe shattering against the linoleum floor.
Eleanor leaned over the camera, her hollow, skeletal face filling my dashboard screen, her teeth bared in a blood-stained sneer.
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"Five minutes, Claire," Eleanor whispered into the lens. "Five minutes before I turn off Arthur’s ventilator and cut his throat with the broken syringe. Let’s see if your little empire can drive through black ice fast enough to save the man who stole your life."
The screen went black.
