Chapter 9 - The Train Beneath the Estate
Julian had been stabbed below the ribs.
Genevieve knelt beside him before Eleanor could stop her. Her hands pressed against the wound while Gabriel searched the railcar.
“No Maya,” Gabriel called.
Julian caught Eleanor’s sleeve.
“Mother moved her.”
“Where?”
“The train. Forward cars. Vale changed the plan.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Because they do not need me anymore.”
He coughed, and blood touched his lips.
Eleanor felt no love when she looked at him. That absence surprised her. She had once believed hatred would replace love, but what remained was colder: the recognition of a stranger who had occupied her life.
“You watched Genevieve hit Maya,” she said.
Julian closed his eyes. “I know.”
“You told them to take her away.”
“I was trying to keep the gala on schedule.”
“Your daughter was crying, and you were worried about a schedule.”
“She is not my daughter.”
Eleanor struck him.
The slap was not hard enough to worsen his injury, but it turned his face.
“She called you Daddy,” Eleanor said. “That was enough to make her your daughter. You chose not to be her father.”
Julian looked at her with something like shame.
The railcar jerked.
Doors closed behind them. The train began moving.
Covert agents attempted to board, but a steel barrier dropped across the platform, separating Eleanor, Gabriel, Genevieve, and Julian from the team.
They were carried into darkness.
Gabriel found an emergency medical kit. Genevieve bandaged Julian while Eleanor moved toward the front connection.
“Why are you helping him?” Eleanor asked.
Genevieve did not look up. “Because I do not want another person’s death on my hands.”
“That is not redemption.”
“I know.”
Julian whispered, “She has always wanted an audience.”
Genevieve tightened the bandage until he groaned.
The next car contained rows of filing cabinets. The one after that held medical equipment and old incubators. Eleanor found photographs taped along a wall: children at different ages, each labeled with a code.
Some photographs had red lines through them.
Gabriel stopped at one.
It showed three boys standing beside Victoria in a garden.
Julian, Gabriel, and another child several years older.
Nathan.
The older boy’s face had been scratched out.
“Why do you not remember him?” Eleanor asked.
Gabriel touched the photograph. “I remember a song. Someone singing when the lights went out. I thought it was my mother.”
Julian spoke from the doorway. “It was Nathan.”
He had followed them, one hand against his wound.
“You remember him?” Gabriel asked.
“I remember everything.”
Gabriel crossed the car and seized his collar. “Then why did you use his name?”
“Because Sebastian told me Nathan betrayed the family.”
“What happened to him?”
“He helped Evelyn escape. Vale caught them before they reached the border.”
“Our mother is dead?”
Julian looked away.
“I saw Vale shoot her.”
Gabriel’s fist struck Julian’s jaw. Julian fell against a cabinet.
Eleanor stepped between them. “Maya first.”
The train entered a wide underground chamber. Through the windows, they saw platforms, laboratories, and people moving equipment into trucks. Meridian Station was being evacuated.
A public-address system announced departure in twelve minutes.
The railcar slowed near a platform marked FOUNDING WARD.
The door opened automatically.
Dr. Vale waited with two armed guards.
“Ledger,” he said.
Eleanor held up the copy.
“Maya.”
Vale gestured toward a glass room across the platform.
Maya sat inside with Victoria. The child’s wrists were free, but the door was locked.
Eleanor moved toward her.
A guard raised his weapon.
“Not yet,” Vale said. “The ledger must be authenticated.”
Gabriel stepped forward. “Let me enter with her.”
Vale smiled. “You were always the sentimental twin.”
“And Julian was the obedient one.”
“Until tonight.”
Julian leaned against the railcar, pale. “You stabbed me because I refused to let you draw Maya’s blood.”
Eleanor looked at him.
It was the first claim of protection he had made. She did not know whether it was true.
Vale took the ledger copy, opened it, and laughed.
“This is not the original.”
“No,” Eleanor said. “The original is already with federal investigators.”
The station lights changed from yellow to red.
Vale’s expression disappeared.
“You lied.”
“I learned from my husband.”
Explosions sounded in the distant tunnel. The covert team had breached another entrance.
Victoria pulled Maya from the chair and held a knife against her shoulder.
“Open the door,” Eleanor shouted.
Victoria dragged Maya toward a rear passage.
Gabriel attacked the nearest guard. Genevieve threw a metal tray at the second. Julian lunged toward Vale.
The platform erupted.
Eleanor reached the glass room as Victoria disappeared through the rear door with Maya. The lock required a code. Eleanor smashed the panel with the triangular key until sparks flew.
The door opened.
She ran into a narrow passage leading deeper underground.
“Maya!”
“Mommy!” came a distant cry.
Eleanor followed it into a circular chamber where Victoria stood beside an open elevator shaft.
A cable car waited below.
Victoria held Maya by the arm.
“You destroyed everything,” Victoria said.
“You built it on lies.”
“I built a dynasty.”
“You built a cage.”
Victoria stepped backward toward the cable car.
Eleanor saw the fear in Maya’s eyes and softened her voice.
“Sweetheart, look at me. Remember the swimming game?”
Maya nodded through tears.
“When I say jump, you jump toward me.”
Victoria tightened her grip. “Do not.”
Eleanor held out both arms.
“Jump.”
Maya dropped her weight, twisted, and threw herself forward.
Eleanor caught her.
Victoria lost her balance.
For one second, Eleanor could have let her fall into the shaft.
Instead, she grabbed Victoria’s wrist.
Victoria dangled above the darkness.
“Why?” she gasped.
“Because Maya is watching,” Eleanor said.
Agents rushed into the chamber and pulled Victoria to safety before arresting her.
Eleanor sank to the floor with Maya in her arms.
Maya touched her face.
“I knew you would come.”
Behind them, alarms announced that the station’s destruction sequence had begun.
Then a voice came through the emergency radio.
May you like
Alistair’s voice.
“Eleanor, get out now. Sebastian is at Blackwood House.”
