Chapter 7 - The Confrontation|
"What the hell is this, Vincent?" Marco demanded, his voice echoing in the vast, book-lined room. He took a step toward Julianna, his expression shifting into engineered outrage. "Why is Julianna tied to a chair? Have you lost your mind?"
Vincent didn't answer immediately. He took a slow, deliberate sip of his scotch, the ice clinking softly against the glass.
"She tried to poison my breakfast this morning, Marco," Vincent said, his voice terrifyingly calm.
Marco blinked, pointing a finger at his brother. "She... she what? Vincent, that's insane! Why would Julianna do something like that?"
"That's the same question I asked her," Vincent said. He gestured toward the desk. Resting on the blotter was the small plastic dropper cap and the empty porcelain butter dish. "She didn't bring the poison into the house, Marco. She got it from my safe."
Marco went rigid. The air in the library seemed to lose ten degrees instantly.
"Your safe?" Marco repeated, his voice dropping an octave. "Vincent, only you and I have the combination to that safe."
"Precisely," Vincent said, leaning forward into the amber circle of the desk lamp. "And Julianna didn't guess six numbers by chance."
Julianna looked up, her lips trembling as she stared at Marco with a mixture of terror and desperate hatred.
"Tell him, Marco!" Julianna sobbed, her voice cracking. "Tell him what you threatened to do to my father if I didn't put it in his bread!"
Marco’s face turned as hard as cold steel. The polite, polished younger brother vanished, replaced by a dark, predatory stillness.
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"Shut your mouth, Julianna," Marco said softly.
"He was going to frame Vincent's death as a heart attack!" Julianna screamed, tears running down her cheeks. "Then he was going to leak fake financial documents to the federal prosecutor—my father—showing that Vincent had embezzled eighty million dollars from the family trust! He was going to wipe Vincent's name out of the history books!"
