Chapter 93 The genesis of lies

Chapter 93 The genesis of lies
​The asphalt of the private airfield was a desolate expanse of grey, shimmering under the strobe lights of the hangar and the relentless, driving rain. The roar of the private jet’s engines was a deafening, rhythmic throb that vibrated through the marrow of my bones.
​Victor and I arrived in a screech of tires, the car barely coming to a halt before we were out. My mother was right behind us, her face a mask of terror. Victor didn't use his cane; adrenaline had turned him into something primal, something lethal. We rushed toward the boarding stairs, hand in hand, a final, desperate unit.
​"Mother! Father!" Victor’s voice tore through the mechanical scream of the jet.
​Marcus and Eleanor turned. They stood at the base of the stairs, looking like royalty preparing for an exile. A private nurse stood behind them, cradling a bundle wrapped in white—my son. My Sage.
​The confrontation was instantaneous. Victor didn't wait for a greeting. He drew the weapon he had taken from Vane’s kit and fired. A single, sharp crack echoed over the engine roar. Marcus let out a guttural cry as the bullet shattered his foot, sending him collapsing onto the wet tarmac.
​The Blackwood guards reacted with military precision, half a dozen barrels leveling at Victor’s chest.
​"Stop!" Eleanor screamed, her voice cutting through the chaos. She looked at Victor, her expression shifting in a heartbeat from shock to a sickening, practiced sweetness. "Victor, my son... what is going on? What has gotten into you?"
​"Don't call me that," Victor spat, his arm shaking as he kept the gun aimed at the guards.
​I stepped forward, my voice trembling, my eyes locked on the nurse. "Where are you taking our baby? Give him to me!"
​Eleanor ignored me as if I were a ghost. She barked orders to another nurse to attend to Marcus’s bleeding foot and commanded the guards to disarm us. The weight of the numbers was too much. Within seconds, the guards had wrestled the gun from Victor’s hand and pinned us back. They forced Victor into a heavy transport chair nearby, binding his wrists with zip-ties.
​"Victor," Eleanor said, her voice now cold, stripped of every ounce of motherly warmth. She stood over us, cradling Sage as if he were a piece of merchandise. "The nerve to shoot your father. After everything we built for you."
​"Where are you taking my son?" Victor roared, fighting against the ties. "And which kidnapping syndicate are you working for? I know you’re the ringleaders! I know what you did! What business did you have with Elias?"
​Eleanor let out a sharp, jagged laugh that sounded like glass breaking. She looked down at Marcus, who was being hoisted into the jet’s cabin, groaning in pain.
​"Elias Mhlaba," Eleanor mused, her eyes landing on me for the first time with pure venom. "He was a good servant of ours. Loyal. Discrete. Until he felt like he could double-cross us. He wanted to 'expose' the syndicate to the world because he grew a conscience too late."
​She took a step closer to the pinned Victor. "After we lost our biological son in that fire in Cape Town, we were desperate. We asked Elias to use his connections to find us a replacement—a child identical to ours. He refused. But luckily for us, he had a son of his own. Jacob. A child who was a splitting resemblance of our lost Victor."
​My heart stopped. The air in my lungs turned to ice.
​"So, we took him," Eleanor continued, her voice light, as if she were discussing a business merger. "We had our Victor through him. We erased the Mhlaba and created a Blackwood. Oh, by the way, Victor... you should be glad we’re taking this child away. This 'Sage' is a disgrace. A curse. The result of siblings who didn't know their own blood."
​The words hit me with the force of a physical explosion. Siblings.
​My blood began to boil, then instantly froze. The room—the airfield—everything began to spin. A violent, searing pain erupted from my stitches, a hot crawl of agony that felt like my body was literally tearing itself apart in rejection of the truth. My stomach sank into a dark, bottomless pit.
​"No..." I gasped, my vision blurring. "No, it’s a lie. It’s a lie!"
​I collapsed onto the cold, wet tarmac, my hands clutching my abdomen. The pain was blinding, a white-hot scream behind my eyes.
​"She’s lying, sunshine!" Victor screamed, his voice breaking as he watched me fall. "Why wouldn't she have stopped us all along if that were the case? Why let it go this far?"
​Eleanor didn't argue. She snapped her fingers, and a worker emerged from the jet, handing her a thick, leather-bound file. She threw it at Victor’s feet. It burst open, spilling out DNA reports, old hospital records from Cape Town, and a birth certificate for Jacob Mhlaba with a "deceased" stamp that had been forged over twenty years ago. Everything pointed to one horrific reality: Victor was Jacob. Victor was my brother.
​"I don't have time for this," Eleanor said, looking at her diamond-encrusted watch. "I have serious buyers waiting for this baby in Dubai. He’s the perfect specimen for the syndicate’s next tier. I wish we could talk all night, but... bye-bye, Victor. Or should I say, Jacob?"
​I laid there on the ground, the rain washing over my face. I didn't care about the jet. I didn't care about the guards. I had no power to scream, no air to cry. I just wanted the world to end. I wanted the earth to open up and swallow the airfield, the Blackwoods, and the monstrous truth of my existence.
​Victor was fighting the chair, his roars of agony mingling with the whine of the jet engines, but it was useless.
​Eleanor turned her back on us, clutching my son, and walked up the stairs. The heavy door of the jet hissed shut, sealing away the light.
​A few minutes later, the engines reached a crescendo. The jet began to taxi, the backwash of the turbines throwing a spray of cold water over us. I watched through half-closed eyes as the lights of the plane lifted off, banking steeply into the black, stormy sky.
​The sirens finally pierced the air—the police, Maya, the backup—they were rushing onto the scene, blue and red lights flashing against the hangars. But the sky was empty.
​My brother was a stranger. My lover was my brother. And my son was gone, flying into a night where the sun would never rise.
​I felt my consciousness fading into the cold grey of the tarmac, the last thing I heard being Victor’s broken, rhythmic sobbing, calling a name that no longer belonged to him.