Chapter 12 - The Price of Silence.
Evan tackled Gideon before he could fire again.
The handgun slid beneath a ventilation unit.
Rowan ran to Elise and pulled the wheelchair away from the edge.
Miriam used the sharp corner of the Meridian pin to cut her wrist ties.
Marcus lay on the wet concrete with blood spreading across his shoulder.
He was alive, but barely conscious.
The rooftop speakers finished the twelfth chime.
Nothing happened.
No liquidation notice appeared.
No alarms changed.
Miriam had been right.
Gideon had invented the protocol to frighten Rowan into surrendering the key.
Evan pinned him against the concrete.
Gideon drove an elbow into Evan's bruised ribs and broke free.
He reached the roof door just as it opened.
Vivian stood there with Daniel Cross behind her.
Daniel's forehead was bandaged, and his gun was aimed at Evan.
Vivian took in Marcus's wound, Elise's wheelchair, and Gideon's expression.
“The ledger ends in your account,” she told Gideon.
“You used my signatures to steal from me.”
Elise almost laughed.
“You stole from six hundred employees.”
Vivian did not look at her sister.
Gideon offered Vivian a place on Meridian's board if she helped retrieve the key.
“You can keep your penthouse, your name, and enough money to disappear.”
Vivian glanced at Rowan's torn jacket.
Her gaze lingered on the sleeve where the real key was hidden.
“And what happens to her?”
“The same thing that should have happened before she reached the lobby.”
Daniel moved toward Rowan.
Vivian stepped aside.
For one terrible moment, Rowan believed arrogance had won again.
Then Vivian drove her elbow into Daniel's injured temple.
He stumbled.
Evan struck the gun from his hand.
Miriam kicked it through the gap beneath the roof railing.
Daniel fled down the service stairs.
Gideon followed him and locked the heavy door from the other side.
Vivian stood in the rain with mascara finally darkening beneath her eyes.
“Do not mistake that for an apology,” she said.
“I would never make that mistake,” Rowan answered.
Elise reached for Marcus's hand.
His eyes opened.
“I am sorry,” he whispered.
Elise pulled her hand away.
“Sorry is what people say when the truth can no longer hurt them.”
Miriam called emergency services from the roof phone.
The line was dead.
Gideon had cut rooftop communications.
Evan discovered that the service door could not be opened from their side.
The only route down was the exterior maintenance cradle used to clean the lobby skylight.
The narrow platform hung from cables thirty stories above the street.
Rowan secured Elise's wheelchair to it.
Vivian stared at the swaying cradle.
“I am not getting on that.”
“Then Gideon wins before you reach a courtroom,” Rowan said.
Vivian climbed aboard.
Evan remained with Marcus until paramedics could reach the roof.
Miriam stayed to help him.
Rowan, Elise, and Vivian descended along the glass face of the Aurelia.
Below them, the lobby glowed beneath the crystal chandeliers.
Gideon and Daniel entered through the service doors.
They forced the remaining staff away from the circular logo.
Daniel climbed a maintenance ladder toward the central chandelier.
Gideon looked up through the skylight and saw the three women descending.
He activated the chandelier's motor.
The enormous fixture began lowering toward the marble.
Vivian watched him reach for the place where Conrad's original will was hidden.
“He will burn it,” she said.
Rowan released the cradle's safety brake.
The platform plunged toward the lobby roof.
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THE WOMAN BENEATH THE CHANDELIERS
