Chapter 6 - The Ghost from the Past
The revelation hit Julian like a physical blow.
Eleanor Vance. The pariah of the family. The woman who had tried to systematically dismantle his father’s legacy decades ago before vanishing into the shadows of European banking secrecy. If Eleanor was back, and if she had somehow harbored a branch of the family line—or manipulated circumstances to produce these twin girls—it meant the children were not just random orphans; they were pieces in a high-stakes, decades-long vendetta.
“Where is she now?” Julian asked, his voice dropping into a chilling, lethal register.
“Our tracking units flagged her private charter landing at a private airstrip north of the city,” Arthur replied, handing the tablet over. “She’s currently residing at the old Vance family estate on the northern cliffs—the manor that has been boarded up and abandoned since the probate court settlement twenty years ago.”
Julian looked down at the tablet screen, which displayed a thermal satellite feed of the sprawling, gothic cliffside mansion overlooking the frozen ocean. A single amber light burned in the second-floor master study.
“She knew I would be in the city tonight for the annual board charity gala,” Julian realized aloud, the pieces clicking together with terrifying precision. “She didn't just abandon those girls by accident. She orchestrated it. She wanted me to find them. She wanted me to look into their eyes and see the birthmark.”
“It’s a trap, sir,” Arthur warned. “If she’s using children as leverage for a corporate buyout or to contest the estate trust, going out there alone is exactly what she wants.”
“I don't care about the estate trust, Arthur,” Julian said coldly, turning back toward the door of Suite 400 where Zelda and Cara slept. “She used two six-year-old children as pawns in the freezing snow on Christmas night. That crosses a line from corporate warfare into pure malice.”
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Julian checked his watch. It was 4:15 AM.
“Have a tactical transport fueled and ready on the roof helipad in ten minutes. I’m going to the cliffside manor. And Arthur? Bring the legal team’s senior enforcement partner. We’re going to end this family war permanently.”
