Chapter 15 - THE FALL OF THE DRAGON
Driven into a corner like a feral animal, Marcus didn't shoot. Realizing the room was lost, he suddenly grabbed me by the shoulder, yanking me against his chest as a human shield, pressing the cold steel barrel of the gun against my temple!
"Stay back!" Marcus roared at Arthur and the approaching crowd. "Back off, or I blow her head off!"
Arthur froze, his hands raised, his eyes burning with helpless terror. "Marcus, let her go! It’s me you want!"
"Out of my way!" Marcus spat, dragging me backward toward the heavy velvet curtains masking the terrace doors.
Using my weight, I resisted, digging my heels into the parquet floor to slow him down. As we reached the curtain line, Elena rushed down the balcony staircase, while Arthur lunged forward, ignoring the threat to his own life.
Marcus panicked. He swung the gun away from my head to point it at Arthur’s chest—
CRASH!
In that split second of distraction, I drove my elbow backward with all the strength in my body, striking Marcus directly in the ribs!
Marcus gasped in pain, his grip loosening. Arthur closed the distance instantly, grabbing Marcus’s wrist and twisting it upward. A loud gunshot shattered the air—the bullet lodging harmlessly into the plaster ceiling—before Arthur delivered a devastating right hook to Marcus’s jaw.
Marcus crashed heavily onto the glass coffee table, shattering it into a thousand glittering shards. The silver revolver clattered across the floor, spinning right to the feet of the Chief of City Police, who had just burst into the ballroom with six armed patrol officers.
"Marcus Sterling!" the Police Chief bellowed, drawing his service weapon and stepping over the shattered glass. "By order of the High Court, you are under arrest for fraud, extortion, and attempted murder!"
Marcus lay amidst the broken glass, his lip bleeding, his immaculate suit ruined and covered in dust. He looked up at Arthur, at Elena, and finally at me, his eyes filled with a mixture of bitter rage and total, soul-crushing defeat.
Arthur pulled me tightly into his arms, checking my face and neck with trembling hands. "Are you hurt? Did he hurt you?"
"I'm fine, Arthur," I sobbed, wrapping my arms around his neck, burying my face in his shoulder as the police dragged a screaming, cursing Marcus out of the ballroom in heavy iron handcuffs.
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Elena ran up the dais, throwing her arms around both of us.
The guests, realizing the nightmare was finally over, erupted into thunderous, echoing applause. The shadows that had haunted our family for decades had finally been shattered by the light of truth.
