Chapter 13 - Poison in the Chalice
The silence in the boardroom was absolute. You could hear the faint hum of the air conditioning sixty-eight floors above the street, and the rapid, shallow breathing of Marcus Holloway.
He looked around the table, desperately seeking support from the other board members. Cynthia Ward looked down at her hands, refusing to meet his gaze. The other six directors, seasoned corporate vultures who knew when a carcass had been stripped clean, turned their faces away.
Holloway slowly stood up. His hands were shaking, not with fear, but with a virulent, consuming hatred.
“You think you’ve won, Maya?” Holloway hissed, leaning in close so only Carmela, Dante, and I could hear. “You think sitting in that leather chair makes you a Thorne? You don't even know what you are. Alexander Cross built you in a petri dish. Your mother didn't love you—she stole you because she couldn't bear the thought of what Cross was going to harvest from your marrow.”
Dante took one deliberate step forward. The sound of his leather dress shoes against the floor sounded like a cocked hammer.
Holloway flinched, grabbed his briefcase from the side table, and stormed toward the double doors. As he crossed the threshold, he stopped and looked back over his shoulder, a sickening, triumphant grin twisting his lips.
“Enjoy the view while it lasts, Ms. Vance,” Holloway sneered. “The harvest begins tonight.”
The heavy mahogany doors slammed shut behind him.
I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding. My knees felt hollow, but I refused to let anyone in that room see me falter. I pulled back the high-backed leather chair at the head of the table—the Founder’s seat—and sat down.
“Carmela,” I said, resting my elbows on the glass. “Call the general counsel. I want every asset associated with Marcus Holloway frozen immediately under corporate emergency bylaws. Review every maritime manifest signed by Cynthia Ward over the past forty-eight months.”
Cynthia looked up, her expression a mix of defensive terror and calculated submission. “Ms. Vance, my shipping logs are completely compliant with federal regulations—”
“If they are compliant, you have nothing to fear, Mrs. Ward,” I cut her off without looking at her. “If they aren't, I suggest you retain better lawyers than Marcus had. This meeting is adjourned.”
The directors stood up in unison, gathering their folders with frantic haste, eager to escape the suffocating tension of the room. Within two minutes, only Carmela, Dante, and I remained.
Carmela slumped into the chair to my right, resting her forehead in her trembling hands. “God in heaven. We did it. We actually took the floor.”
“We took the room, Carmela,” I replied, staring at the cracked glass where the Founder’s Seal rested. “We haven't taken the city. Holloway wasn't lying about Alexander Cross. The journal confirmed it.”
Carmela’s head snapped up. “What did you say?”
I slid my mother’s black leather notebook across the table. Carmela opened the first page, her eyes darting across Victoria’s handwriting. As she read, the remaining color drained from her cheeks until she looked like a marble statue.
“Cross...” Carmela whispered, horror choking her voice. “Victoria told me Cross was an investor. A silent partner who funded the bio-tech acquisitions in Switzerland. She never told me... she never said you were the project.”
“She was trying to protect you,” I said quietly. “And now Cross knows the seal has been claimed. He knows I’m not hiding in the shadows anymore.”
Suddenly, the internal intercom on the conference phone beeped.
“Ms. Vance?” the voice of the executive receptionist crackled through the speaker, her tone tight and anxious. “Mr. Holloway’s private vehicle... there’s been an incident outside the main entrance on Michigan Avenue.”
Dante moved to the floor-to-ceiling window in two strides, looking down past the sheer glass drop.
Far below, sixty-eight stories down, a towering plume of thick, oily black smoke was billowing into the Chicago sky. Even through the soundproof glass, the dull, concussive *THUD* of a car bomb resonated through the concrete foundation of the tower.
“Holloway’s Mercedes,” Dante reported, his jaw tight as he lowered his binoculars. “Detonated five seconds after he pulled out of the underground garage. Secondary fuel explosion. The vehicle is completely incinerated.”
Carmela covered her mouth, stifling a scream.
“They didn't kill him because he failed,” I said, my heart turning to lead as I watched the black smoke rise toward the clouds. “They killed him to keep him from talking to the Department of Justice. Cross is cleaning house.”
“Dante,” I ordered, turning around. “Where is Toby?”
“Safehouse Bravo. Out in Lake Forest,” Dante said, his voice dropping into full tactical mode. “Three layers of perimeter wire, four armed contractors, and an off-grid satellite uplink. No one knows the location except me and my senior lieutenant, Miller.”
“Then we go to Lake Forest right now,” I said, picking up the seal and my mother’s journal.
“Wait,” Dante said, raising his hand, his eyes narrowing as he looked at the conference sideboard where the executive catering had been laid out before the meeting.
On a silver tray sat a chilled crystal decanter of sparkling mineral water, flanked by three crystal glasses.
Dante approached the tray, leaning down without touching anything. He pulled a miniature ultraviolet penlight from his vest and shined it over the rim of the glass that had been placed directly in front of the Founder’s seat—the glass that had been poured for me before I entered the room.
Under the UV light, a faint, fluorescent greenish-yellow residue glowed along the inner rim of the crystal.
“Ricin derivative,” Dante said coldly, turning off the light. “Contact poison. If you had taken a sip of that water during the meeting, your respiratory system would have collapsed within four minutes. You would have looked like you suffered a massive cardiac arrest from the stress.”
He looked up at the ceiling, tracing the HVAC vents.
“The hit squad on Racine was plan B,” Dante said. “The car bomb on Holloway was plan C. This glass was plan A. Ms. Vance, there is an active syndicate mole inside Thorne Tower’s executive staff.”
Before I could reply, the lights in the boardroom flickered once, twice, and died.
The emergency sirens began to wail through the walls—a piercing, high-pitched mechanical shriek. The computerized voice of the building automation system echoed from the hallway speakers:
*“Warning. Critical security breach in sub-level four. Fire suppression protocols initiated. Elevators locked. Building is entering lockdown mode.”*
“They didn't leave,” Carmela whispered, backing toward the corner of the room. “They're inside the building.”
Dante drew his primary firearm, racking the slide with a clean, lethal click.
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“Stick to the shadows,” Dante said, moving toward the side emergency stairwell. “The wolves aren't gathering anymore, Ms. Vance. They’re already in the house.”
***
