Chapter 6 - Untangling the Empire
Mara stepped past the unconscious enforcers, her bare feet making soft, deliberate steps on the dusty concrete. She knelt beside Silas’s chair, ignoring the drying blood on his collar, and picked up the single remaining plastic blade of the rabbit scissors that had fallen near his shoe.
“You actually kept it,” Silas noted, his dark eyes watching her hands with intense focus.
“I told you,” a small voice chimed from Mara’s hip. Poppy leaned around her mother’s shoulder, pointing a tiny finger at Silas’s chest. “He needed cutting. He’s stuck.”
“She’s right,” Mara said, her voice steady despite the adrenaline coursing through her veins. She slid the broken plastic edge into the tiny gap between the industrial blue cord and Silas’s swollen wrist. Because the cord had been pulled taut, the tension was immense—and the dull, notched edge of the plastic toy caught precisely on a fraying strand of nylon.
“Don't break the other blade,” Silas warned quietly.
“I won't,” Mara muttered, her jaw set. She used the plastic shard like a makeshift saw, working the frayed nylon back and forth with rhythmic, surgical precision.
In less than a minute, with a sharp snap, the main tension cord parted.
Silas immediately flexed his right hand, groaning as blood rushed back into his fingers. Within seconds, he had stripped away the remaining restraints himself, standing up from the iron chair for the first time in hours. He towered over the room, rubbing his bruised wrists, his presence instantly shifting from captive back to commander.
“Voss thinks he’s won,” Silas said, his voice cold as winter ice. He looked down at the two unconscious guards. “He’s calling the emergency board meeting for 8:00 AM in the main boardroom. He thinks I’m dead, and his forged proxy documents are waiting in the safe.”
“They aren't just in the safe,” Mara corrected him, standing up and setting Poppy down safely behind a clean crate. She reached into the pocket of her cardigan and pulled out a folded piece of heavy cardstock she had swiped from Graham’s desk earlier that evening. “He left the master ledger backup in the library vault. He’s arrogant enough to think no one knows the combination.”
Silas took the paper from her hand, his eyes scanning the detailed financial routing numbers. A slow, terrifying smile spread across his face—the look of a predator who had just cornered its prey.
“You read upside down,” Silas observed, looking up at her with a new level of profound respect.
“I clean upside down, too,” Mara replied evenly. “You learn a lot about people when they assume you’re invisible.”
“Well, Mrs. Ellison,” Silas said, rolling his shoulders as he cracked his knuckles. “You are officially no longer invisible. Are you ready to take down a multi-million-dollar corporate coup before breakfast?”
Mara looked down at Poppy, who was busy trying to tape the broken pink scissors back together with a stray piece of duct tape she found on the floor.
“Only if I get coffee first,” Mara said.
Ten minutes later, the trio emerged from the service wing into the opulent, silent hallways of the Marino estate. The grand grandfather clock in the foyer chimed 5:00 AM.
May you like
The sun was just beginning to paint Lake Michigan in shades of bruised purple and gold.
Upstairs, Graham Voss was sleeping peacefully in the guest wing suite, dreaming of the absolute power that would be handed to him in three hours. He had no idea that the ghost he thought he had buried in the basement was currently walking up the marble stairs, accompanied by a woman with an extraordinary memory and a toddler holding a broken pink toy.
