Chapter 8 – The First Choice Victoria Ever Made
Chaos erupted.
Richard’s guard raised his weapon.
Eleanor threw the heavy black jewelry box into his face.
The gun fired into the ceiling.
Charles swung his cane against the second guard’s knee.
Victoria grabbed the silver remote.
Richard lunged for her with the pen still buried through his hand.
“You ungrateful little fool!”
Victoria stepped backward.
For the first time that night, the confidence in her face was not borrowed from wealth or family power.
It belonged to her.
“You raised me to believe everyone beneath me was disposable.”
She held the remote behind her back.
“You should have realized I might eventually include you.”
Richard charged.
Victoria pressed a button.
Somewhere below, the ballroom doors unlocked.
But the second guard caught her by the shoulder and slammed her against the table.
The remote flew across the room.
Eleanor reached it first.
She hit the release control again, making certain the security shutters fully opened.
Voices echoed through the building as guests fled the ballroom.
Richard tore the pen from his hand.
Blood soaked his white cuff.
“You have destroyed your own inheritance.”
Eleanor stood.
“No. We destroyed your hostage plan.”
Sirens sounded outside.
The hotel manager smiled weakly from the floor.
“I triggered the silent alarm before entering the elevator.”
Richard looked toward the windows.
Police vehicles were surrounding the hotel.
His expression remained strangely calm.
“You believe local police will arrest me?”
“No,” Eleanor said.
The boardroom screens suddenly turned on.
Richard’s confession played across all thirteen displays.
His statements about Henry’s death.
The stolen companies.
The trust.
The hostages.
Everything had been recorded.
Eleanor pointed toward the rose-shaped brooch on her uniform.
“I told the ballroom I made recordings.”
Richard stared at the tiny camera.
Charles began to laugh.
Not because the situation was funny.
Because the man he had feared for twenty-four years finally looked afraid.
Richard grabbed the pink diamond and ran toward a hidden door behind Henry’s portrait.
Victoria followed.
“Stop him!”
The passage led to the hotel roof.
Cold rain swept across the concrete.
Richard reached the edge, where a helicopter waited with its engine running.
The pilot saw the police lights and immediately lifted away without him.
Richard stood alone, trapped between the sisters and the roof’s edge.
He held the ring above the street.
“One more step and your precious proof disappears.”
Eleanor stopped.
Victoria did not.
“Throw it,” she said.
Richard blinked.
“You do not mean that.”
“You built my entire life around that stone. You taught me that possessing it would make me legitimate.”
She moved closer.
“But it never belonged to you.”
Richard held it over the edge.
“And it does not belong to either of you if I drop it.”
Eleanor looked at Victoria.
Then both women stepped forward together.
Richard’s hand shook.
For the first time, he understood that the diamond no longer controlled them.
He tried to run.
His shoe slipped on the wet roof.
The ring left his hand.
Richard caught the railing.
The pink diamond vanished over the edge.
Eleanor and Victoria watched it fall into the darkness.
Below them, something shattered.
But it was not the diamond.
The ring had landed inside the open sunroof of a police vehicle.
Richard stared down in disbelief.
May you like
Victoria looked at Eleanor.
“Apparently,” she said, “the family luck is not completely dead.”
