“How many?”
I asked quietly.
“Based on the defensive wounds and the distribution of the impacts…”
Thorne hesitated, clearing his throat.
“At least eight or nine distinct points of strike.
Different angles.
Different force profiles.
It was a sustained, group assault.”
“I know who they are,” I said.
Clara’s father, Arthur Montgomery, was a man who viewed his family not as human beings, but as property.
He was a tyrant in a tailored suit, a disgraced former state assemblyman who built a mid-tier real estate empire on the backs of extortion, illegal zoning bribes, and systemic domestic abuse.
He had eight sons—eight monstrous extensions of his own twisted vanity.
They treated their father’s cruelty as holy law.
When Clara fell in love with me six years ago, Arthur had forbidden it.
To him, I was Adrian Vance: a quiet, unremarkably wealthy corporate consultant who ran a modest asset acquisition firm.
