Chapter 24 - The Bloodline's Last Monster
"Your half-sister?" Liam grabbed the phone, switching it to speaker. "Charles Senior had another child?"
"Charles Senior didn't care about lineage," Brendan said, his voice shaking with bitter self-hatred. "He used children as tax exemptions and asset shields. Maya was raised in Zurich under a private contract. When our family went under, her offshore trust collapsed. She thinks you stole her inheritance because Diane fed her forged accounting records from prison."
"Diane," I whispered, the venomous web of that family tightening around my throat once more. "Even behind bars, she’s orchestrating the kill."
"Maya doesn't care about the money anymore," Brendan warned. "She wants Diane out of Danbury. She wants an executive commutation from the Governor, and she’s using your newborn as the bargaining chip. If you wire the funds, she still releases the toxin—because in her mind, our family’s blood must be erased completely."
"How do we stop her, Brendan?" I demanded. "You worked Charles Senior's offshore security for five years. What is her blind spot?"
"Maya has an electronic pacemaker," Brendan said instantly. "A specialized ceramic cardiac implant placed after a severe congenital defect when she was twelve. It operates on an unencrypted medical telemetry frequency—402 megahertz. If you trigger an industrial electromagnetic pulse or an MRI override in that corridor, her pacemaker enters safe-mode reboot. She will have forty seconds of complete muscular paralysis."
Arthur looked up from his tablet. "The hospital’s high-field 3-Tesla MRI suite is on this exact floor. Just fifty yards down the western wing."
"How do we pull her into the MRI corridor without her pressing the aerosol valve?" Liam asked.
May you like
I looked at the timer on the burner phone: 04:15.
"We give her exactly what Diane promised her," I said. "We give her me."
