Forbidden Bloodline

THE CAGE OF BROKEN GLASS

Chapter 2:

​ Elara Vance

He let go of me and disappeared into the shadows of the mansion. I stood there, the cold metal of the key biting into my skin. My heart was thundering in my ears. I had the key. I had the truth. But as I looked down the long, dark hallway toward the library, I realized I was terrified of what was waiting for me on the other side.

Was I ready to lose the only father I had ever known to find the man who had destroyed my life?

I turned and ran toward the library. I reached the door and shoved the key into the lock. It turned with a heavy, final thud. I pushed the door open, but the room wasn't empty.

Sitting in Julian's chair, bathed in the moonlight, was a man I had never seen before. He held a gun in his lap and a photograph in his hand.

"About time you showed up," the stranger said, his voice rasping. "I’ve been waiting ten years to show you how your mother really died."

I looked at the photograph in his hand. It was a picture of a car crash. And standing over the wreckage, holding a gasoline can, was Julian Cross.

I opened my mouth to scream, but a hand clamped over my face from behind, and Julian’s voice whispered in my ear, "I told you not to use the key, Elara."

The cold barrel of the gun was the only thing more frozen than my heart. I stared at the man sitting in Julian’s chair, my breath hitching in my throat. He looked like a ghost from a nightmare I had forgotten. His face was a map of scars and bitterness, and the photograph in his hand was a death warrant. It showed the car crash that stole my childhood. It showed Julian Cross holding a canister of gasoline, his face illuminated by the orange glow of a fire he had started.

"He didn't save you, Elara," the stranger rasped. "He harvested you."

I wanted to scream, but the hand over my mouth was warm, firm, and smelled of expensive tobacco. Julian’s chest was a wall of solid muscle against my back. He didn't flinch. He didn't even sound surprised.

"Leave us, Marcus," Julian said. His voice was a low, dangerous vibration that I felt in my own spine. "You’ve been paid to stay dead. Don't make it official."

The man, Marcus, stood up slowly. He kept the gun leveled at Julian…or perhaps at both of us. "The money is running out, Julian. And the girl is starting to look exactly like her mother. That’s a dangerous game you’re playing."

Julian shoved me roughly to the side, stepping between me and the weapon. He didn't look like a father. He looked like a king defending a border. "The game ended the moment she turned twenty…one. Now, get out before I stop being patient."

Marcus sneered, tossed the photograph onto the mahogany desk, and vanished through the balcony doors into the rainy Manhattan night. The silence that followed was heavy. It felt like the air had turned into lead.

I stared at the photo. The image of the burning car burns my retinas. My mother was in that car. I was in that car. And Julian was the one with the fire.

"Is it true?" I whispered. My voice sounded like it belonged to someone else. "Did you set the fire?"

Julian turned to face me. He didn't reach out. He didn't offer a hug or a lie. He stood there with his hands behind his back, his face a mask of cold stone. "The fire was necessary, Elara. Without it, they would have found you. And if they found you, you would have been a specimen in a lab before your tenth birthday."

"You kidnapped me!" I screamed. I lunged at him, my fists striking his chest. It was like hitting a mountain. "You let me call you 'Father' for eleven years! You watched me cry for the mother you murdered!"

He caught my wrists in one hand, pinning them against his chest. He forced me to look at him. His eyes weren't cold anymore; they were burning with a dark, possessive light. "I never asked you to call me that. You chose the word because you needed a hero. I let you believe the lie because the truth would have broken your mind."

"I am broken now!" I sobbed, struggling against his grip. "Who am I, Julian? If I’m not a Cross, who am I?"

He pulled me closer, his face inches from mine. "You are the most valuable bloodline in the world. You are the key to a legacy that people would burn cities to own. And you are mine. By blood, by debt, and by choice."

"I never chose you," I spat.

"You choose me every time you look for me in a crowded room," he countered. "You choose me every time you let me touch you. You feel it, Elara. The pull. It isn't daughterly. It never was."

The honesty of his words felt like a physical blow. He was right. My grief was being swallowed by a terrifying realization. I had spent years seeking the approval of a man who was my captor. I had felt sparks of desire for the man who stole my life. The betrayal wasn't just his; it was my own body’s.

He released my wrists and walked over to the desk. He picked up the photograph and shredded it into tiny pieces. "Marcus was my head of security ten years ago. He’s a blackmailer and a drunk. But he’s right about one thing. You do look like her. And that means the Obsidian Circle will be coming for you soon."

"What is the Obsidian Circle?" I asked, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand. I tried to stand tall, to find the strength I didn't know I had.

Julian sat on the edge of the desk, watching me with a predatory intensity. "They are the people your mother was running from. They believe that certain bloodlines carry the secret to cellular regeneration. Immortality, Elara. They think you are the fountain of youth. Your mother was a scientist for them until she stole their most successful 'subject.' You."

I stared at him, my mind spinning. "So... you didn't kill her for money? You stole me to protect me from them?"

"I stole you because I wanted you," Julian said. The bluntness of his admission made my skin crawl and tingle at the same time. "Protecting you was just the price I had to pay to keep you."

"You’re a monster," I whispered.

"I am the monster that keeps the other monsters away," he replied. He stood up and walked toward me, his movements fluid and graceful. "Now, listen carefully. The man who burst into the ballroom...the one talking about the 'Red File'...he wasn't one of mine. He was a plant. They know you have the key. They know you’re in this room."

"How?" I looked at the door.

"Because the choker I gave you isn't just diamonds, Elara. It’s a beacon."

I reached for my neck, my fingers fumbling with the stones. "Take it off! Julian, take it off me!"

He reached out and stopped my hands. "No. If you take it off, they lose the signal and they strike immediately. We need them to think we are unaware. We need to move."

"Where?"

"To the one place they can't follow. The underground."

He grabbed a heavy coat from the chair and draped it over my shoulders. He didn't ask if I was ready. He simply led me toward a bookshelf. He pulled a specific volume, and the entire wall groaned as it slid back, revealing a dark, steel-lined elevator.

As we stepped inside, the doors hissed shut. The descent was rapid. I felt the pressure in my ears. I looked at Julian in the reflection of the stainless steel walls. He looked like a man going to war.

"Why didn't you tell me sooner?" I asked. "Why wait until my twenty-first birthday?"

"Because today is the day your mother’s will becomes active," Julian said. "Today, you inherit the coordinates to their main laboratory. You are the only person who can unlock their system. You are the weapon that can destroy them, or the prize that can make them gods."

The elevator stopped with a jarring thud. The doors opened, but we weren't in a basement. We were in a high-tech bunker that looked like a command center. Monitors lined the walls, showing every angle of the Cross estate.

One screen caught my eye. It showed my bedroom. Silas Vane was standing in the middle of the room, holding the micro-SD card I thought I had hidden in my shoe. He looked directly into the camera and smiled. He wasn't the "safe" suitor I thought he was. He was a hunter.

"Silas?" I gasped. "He’s working for them?"

"He is them," Julian said, his jaw tightening. "His father is the chairman of the Circle. Silas was sent to groom you, to make you trust him so you would run to him when you found out I wasn't your father."

I felt a wave of nausea. Everything was a lie. My father was a kidnapper. My suitor was a cultist. My life was a scripted play.

Julian grabbed a bag of tactical gear and tossed it onto a table. "We have ten minutes before they breach the penthouse. We need to wipe off the servers and vanish."

"Why are you doing this, Julian?" I asked, my voice cracking. "If I’m so valuable, why don't you just hand me over and take the money? You’ve already lied to me for half my life. Why stop now?"

He stopped what he was doing and turned to me. He walked across the room until he was so close I could feel the heat radiating from his skin. He placed his hands on the wall on either side of my head, pinning me in place.

"Because I realized something the moment I saw you in that burning car," he whispered. His voice was raw, stripped of its usual corporate polish. "I didn't just want the legacy. I didn't just want the power. I wanted the girl who looked at the flames and didn't blink. I’ve spent eleven years waiting for you to grow up so I could stop pretending to be your father and start being your master."

He leaned in, his lips brushing against mine. It wasn't a kiss of comfort. It was a kiss of ownership. It tasted of scotch and desperation. I should have pushed him away. I should have hated him. But in a world where everyone was trying to use me, his honesty…however dark…was the only thing that felt real. I found myself gripping his lapels, pulling him closer as the world above us began to explode.

A loud boom shook the bunker. Dust fell from the ceiling. On the monitors, we watched as the library door was blown off its hinges. Armed men in white masks swarmed the room.

"They're here," I whispered.