surgical precision. But as I looked into his eyes now, the corporate mask was slipping. Beneath it was a hunger I had never noticed before.
“Why did Celeste warn me about you, Marcus?” I asked.
Marcus sighed, a breath of white mist in the freezing air. He reached inside his overcoat. Two of my security men—the ones near the SUV—suddenly drew their weapons. But they didn’t aim at the house. They aimed at me.
“Because Celeste remembers my face,” Marcus said, his voice shedding its professional veneer, revealing a raw, bitter edge. “She remembers the little boy who used to visit Conrad in secret. The son he kept hidden while Graham paraded around in bespoke suits.”
Graham, still shivering on the ground, stared in disbelief. “You…?”
“I am Conrad Harrington’s blood, too,” Marcus sneered, looking down at Graham with absolute disgust. “His bastard. The son he deemed ‘unfit’ for the
Harrington name because my mother was a maid. He left me nothing but a law degree and a front-row seat to watch you idiots squander the empire.”
He looked back at me. “I didn’t just help you out of loyalty, Evelyn. You were the perfect Trojan Horse. I needed Vivian distracted, stripped of her corporate armor, forced into a corner so she would open the bunker. You did all the heavy lifting for me.”
“You want the vault,” I stated, calculating the distance between myself and the guns.
“I want what is owed to me,” Marcus corrected. He gestured to the SUV. “Vivian thinks she holds the cards because she has the mother. But I have the keys. The twins.”
Dr. Cross, inside the vehicle, locked the doors with a loud clack.
Marcus smiled thinly. “Shoot out the glass if you have to,” he ordered the two rogue guards.
“Marcus,
