Chapter 4 - The Mother's Bargain
The acrid smell of the chemical gas immediately burned my lungs and made my eyes water.
Liam coughed violently and tried to shoot the electronic lock off the heavy oak door.
The bullets simply ricocheted off the reinforced steel plate hidden beneath the wood.
My mother's voice echoed through the intercom again, sounding incredibly bored and disappointed.
She offered us a simple bargain to spare our lives.
She demanded that I slide the black USB drive under the narrow gap beneath the door.
My mother confessed that she never actually cared about my father or his pathetic investment firm.
She had secretly engineered the offshore accounts so that she could steal the money from him and disappear forever.
The black drive contained the only digital access keys required to transfer the five hundred million dollars.
Vanessa screamed at the intercom, calling our mother a heartless monster for trying to kill her own daughters.
My mother simply laughed and said that family was nothing more than a biological inconvenience.
The white gas grew thicker, and I felt my knees begin to buckle from the lack of oxygen.
Liam grabbed a heavy brass lamp from the desk and swung it with all his remaining strength at the reinforced window.
The thick glass spider-webbed but stubbornly refused to shatter.
I looked at the black USB drive in my hand and realized it was our only leverage.
I yelled toward the intercom that I would gladly destroy the drive if she didn't open the door.
I placed the small device on the floor and raised my heavy heel directly above it.
My mother shouted in sudden panic, ordering me to step away from the device immediately.
The electronic locks clicked, and the heavy office doors swung wide open.
We stumbled out into the hallway, gasping desperately for clean air.
My mother was standing there with two massive armed guards, a wicked smile on her face.
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She casually ordered the men to execute us and retrieve the drive from my dead body.
Just as the guards raised their rifles, a deafening explosion rocked the foundation of the mansion.
