Chapter 69 The Price of Treason
Chapter 69 The Price of Treason
Sandra
"Get your filthy hands off my mother’s jewelry box, Olivia, before I make sure you never hold anything of value again."
I kicked the shattered fragments of the bedroom door aside, my breath coming in short, ragged gasps as I stepped into the ruined master suite. The smoke from the garage explosion was still drifting through the ventilation shafts, but the air in this room became instantly freezing. Olivia was standing by my vanity, wearing a duplicate of my emerald gala dress, her fingers digging through my personal safe. She looked up, her expression morphing from a confident, seductive smirk into pure, jagged shock when she saw me standing there alive.
Why is my heart racing? It was not because of the biological countdown or the toxic fumes I had just escaped from the panic room. It was the absolute, raw fury exploding inside my chest. For months, I played the part of the submissive, polite daughter. I had been the sacrificial lamb sent to take her place at the altar. I had been the good girl who quietly endured the corporate schemes, the public scandals, and the terrifying family secrets.
But looking at her trying to steal my identity to trick my husband, something inside me broke completely. The helpless victim died right there in the doorway.
"Sandra," Olivia sneered, recovering her arrogant composure as she dropped a diamond necklace onto the glass table. She took a step toward me, her heels clicking against the hardwood. "You shouldn't have crawled out of that vent. You are ruining a perfect transition. Alexander was almost mine before you disrupted the signal. I am the original asset of the Draken treaty, remember? You are just a temporary replacement."
"I am the woman who owns fifty-one percent of the empire you are trying to beg for," I replied, my voice dropping into a low, viciously calm frequency that completely lacked its usual witty shield.
"Alexander will take those shares back the moment he realizes you are a biological hazard to his board," she mocked, walking closer until she was standing directly in my face, her eyes filled with a manic, unfiltered malice. "You think you won because he likes your scent? You are nothing but a tool for his revenge against Arthur. Once the child is born, you will be thrown into the same vault where our mother rotted."
I did not offer a clever counter-attack. I did not wait for Alexander to break through the collapsed hallway to rescue me. This against-the-world war had taught me one thing: if you want to defeat an enemy, you hit them where they think they are untouched.
I pulled my arm back and delivered a brutal, full-force open-palm strike directly across her face.
The loud, violent smack echoed like a gunshot through the entire east wing of the penthouse.
The force of the impact spun Olivia completely around, sending her crashing hard against the marble edge of the vanity. Her duplicate gown ripped as she collapsed onto the floor, her hands instantly flying to her bleeding lip and bruised cheek. She stared up at me, her chest heaving, her eyes wide with an absolute, paralyzed terror. She had spent her whole life treating me like a weak shadow, and she had never expected the shadow to strike back.
"Don't you ever say my mother's name again," I hissed, stepping over her and grabbing the encrypted ledger she had stolen from my safe. "And don't you ever dare to look at my husband again. You fled the altar because you were a coward, Olivia. Now, you will watch me dismantle the throne you ran away from."
The attractive, dominant power that Alexander usually carried seemed to flow through my own veins now. We had successfully defeated Arthur’s digital countdown, and I had just broken the psychological hold my sister held over my past. I stood over her, completely transformed, a dangerous queen ruling over a burning house.
Olivia wiped the blood from her lip, a sudden, terrifying laugh bubbling up from her throat as she pointed toward the automated bedroom television screen behind me. "You think you've won because you can hit me, Sandra?" she wheezed, her fingers trembling as the monitor suddenly flashed with a high-priority federal notification that overrode the Alpha-X firewall.
The screen displayed a live tracking map of the city, showing a black armored convoy arriving at the base of our building, accompanied by an official press release from the Department of Justice. "Look at the signature on the authorization file," Olivia whispered, a cynical, triumphant grin exposing her stained teeth. "Alexander didn't transfer those fifty-one percent shares to protect you.
He did it because under section four of the Draken blood-debt treaty, a non-family majority owner takes full legal liability for all past biological research crimes." I looked at the document as the bedroom elevator doors suddenly hissed open, revealing a team of federal marshals holding a pair of heavy titanium handcuffs.
"Sandra Draken-Thorne," the lead agent announced, drawing his weapon as the biological indicators on my watch began to scream in a panic. "You are under arrest for the illegal cultivation of the Alpha-X sequence, and your husband Alexander has just signed the primary witness affidavit against you.”