Chapter 7 - The Night of the Closed Circuit
The security monitors in the subterranean vault flickered and went black one by one.
Nathaniel Cross stood up from his desk so fast his chair overturned and crashed against the concrete floor.
“What is happening?” he demanded, stabbing the intercom button on the wall. “Marcus! Security team, report!”
Only dead air and high-pitched static answered him.
The entire mansion had just been plunged into pitch darkness. The emergency backup generators hummed once, sputtered, and died.
Up in the East Wing, the heavy silence of the Greenwich estate was broken by the sharp, terrifying hiss of the electronic keypad on the nursery door short-circuiting.
Bzzzzzt.
The heavy deadbolts snapped open.
Ruby stood in the center of the nursery, holding the Eleanor Cross journal against her chest. Oliver was awake, clinging to her skirt, his small body trembling violently as the shadows lengthened across the room.
“Ruby,” Ollie whispered—his first full word spoken to her since she arrived. “The bad lady is coming.”
The door swung slowly open.
Standing in the doorway, illuminated only by the pale moonlight cutting through the bay windows, was Mrs. Vivian Ashcroft.
In her right hand, she held a heavy, silenced revolver. Her silver-blond hair was slightly loose around her temples, and her face no longer held the polished mask of a housekeeper. It was the cold, calculating visage of a professional executioner.
“You shouldn't have opened that panel, Miss Lane,” Ashcroft said softly, stepping into the room. Her heels made no sound on the carpet. “Eleanor was foolish, and her son is a liability. The Cross empire cannot afford a boy who remembers seeing who cut his mother’s brake lines.”
Ruby backed up, shielding Ollie behind her legs. Her mind raced. There was no security camera working. There was no way out.
“You killed her,” Ruby whispered, her voice shaking. “You killed Eleanor.”
“I merely facilitated the transition,” Ashcroft smiled coldly, raising the barrel of the gun. “And now, unfortunately, history must repeat itself. A tragic domestic accident. A new nanny who lost her mind. It writes itself.”
She aimed the gun straight at Ruby’s chest.
Ollie screamed—a piercing, blood-curdling sound of pure, unadulterated terror that echoed through the dark halls.
Before Ashcroft could pull the trigger, the hallway behind her exploded in motion.
A dark shadow lunged out of the darkness.
Nathaniel Cross hit Mrs. Ashcroft like a freight train.
The gun discharged into the ceiling with a deafening crack that shattered the plaster. Ashcroft tumbled backward, hitting the floor hard as Nathaniel pinned her beneath his knees, his bare hands closing around her throat with a rage so terrifying it transcended human fury.
“You,” Nathaniel choked out, his voice a low, animalistic growl. “You killed my wife.”
Ashcroft clawed desperately at his wrists, her face turning purple, gasping for air.
“Natha... Nathaniel...” she choked out.
“Don't you ever say my name,” he snarled, tightening his grip until her eyes rolled back and she went completely limp, unconscious on the carpet.
Nathaniel stayed on his knees for a long, shuddering moment, breathing heavily, his suit jacket torn, his hands stained with soot and adrenaline.
Slowly, he turned his head.
In the center of the nursery, Ruby stood shielding his son. And Ollie, for the first time in two years, had stepped out from behind the cover of her skirt.
The boy looked at his father.
Not with terror. Not with screams.
Ollie took two small steps forward, reached out a trembling hand, and touched Nathaniel’s sleeve.
“Daddy,” Oliver whispered into the quiet room.
May you like
Nathaniel broke.
The billionaire who made Wall Street tremble, the man who hadn't cried since the night of the crash, slumped forward onto the floor and wept into his hands, pulling his son into his arms as the storm outside finally broke over the Greenwich coast.
