Chapter 6 - SHADOWS OF THE PETROLEUM CLUB
The rain returned to Dallas with a vengeance on Thursday morning, turning the mirrored skyscrapers of downtown into towering grey monoliths veiled in mist.
Inside the penthouse suite of the old Magnolia Building—now the headquarters for Julian Mercer’s operations—a makeup artist was carefully applying waterproof foundation over the fading yellow-purple bruises along my jawline.
I looked in the mirror. I barely recognized the woman staring back.
My hair, which had hung limp and unwashed in Edward’s cellar, was swept up into an architectural French twist. I wore an ivory silk blouse under a custom charcoal double-breasted suit crafted by Julian’s tailors—cut precisely to conceal the bulky medical bandages around my torso while emphasizing every sharp, regal angle of my frame. Around my neck hung a thin platinum chain bearing the silver Salazar medal, tucked discreetly beneath my collar.
“You have forty minutes of mobility before the painkillers wear off and the incision starts pulling,” Dr. Chen said, adjusting the IV port taped to my left wrist before snapping on a gold Cartier bracelet to hide the puncture wound. “If your heart rate exceeds one-forty, you risk internal tearing. Do not run. Do not yell. Let them do the fighting.”
“I don't need to yell,” I replied, standing up slowly. The pain was there, a deep, hot ache in my side, but I pushed it down into a dark corner of my mind.
Andrew walked into the room, impeccably dressed in a bespoke midnight-blue suit. In his breast pocket was an encrypted digital drive containing four terabytes of forensic financial data, wiretaps, and the sworn confession of the mechanic who had tampered with our father’s plane in Houston.
“Daniel is in position in the basement parking garage with a team of six,” Andrew said, checking his watch. “Edward brought his entire private security detail. The Petroleum Club’s thirty-second floor has been locked down under private contract. No local police, no unauthorized media. Edward thinks he’s walking into an execution of our estate.”
“He is,” I said, picking up my black leather clutch. “Just not the one he planned.”
Twenty minutes later, a black Lincoln Navigator pulled into the underground service bay beneath the Dallas Petroleum Club. The building was iconic—a fortress of Texas oil money, timber-paneled boardrooms, and cigar-smoke diplomacy where billion-dollar mergers were sealed with handshakes behind closed doors.
We didn't take the public elevators. Julian Mercer had maintained a master access key to the club’s private freight lifts since 1984.
As the lift ascended silently through thirty-two floors of reinforced steel and concrete, my reflection in the polished brass walls showed Andrew and me standing side-by-side. Brother and sister. The ghosts of the Salazar family, rising from the grave to collect a blood debt.
Ding.
The doors opened onto the mahogany-lined reception foyer of the executive boardroom.
Two armed guards in dark suits stood outside the frosted-glass double doors. The moment the elevator opened, their hands dropped toward their waistbands.
“Hold it right there—” the first guard began.
He never finished the sentence. Andrew stepped forward, his movement terrifyingly fast for a man who had nearly burned to death three years ago. His left hand caught the guard’s wrist, twisting it inward with a sickening crunch, while his right palm drove upward into the man’s chin. The guard collapsed like a marionette with its strings cut.
Before the second guard could draw his weapon, Daniel stepped out from the adjacent service corridor, pressing the cold barrel of a pistol against the man’s temple.
“Quiet,” Daniel whispered. “Or this floor gets very loud.”
The guard slowly raised his hands and knelt on the carpet.
I walked past them without a word. I reached the double doors of the boardroom, took a single deep, steady breath that pulled against my surgical tape, and pushed both doors open with a flat, resounding slam that echoed through the cavernous chamber.
Inside, twenty-four men and women in multi-thousand-dollar suits were seated around a forty-foot mahogany conference table.
At the head of the table stood Edward Farrell.
He was in the middle of a sentence, his hand resting on a stack of legal documents, a pen hovering over the signature line. Beside him, dressed in a demure black dress with pearl earrings, sat Renee Cross.
At the sound of the doors bursting open, Edward frowned, irritation flashing across his aristocratic features. “I specifically stated that this meeting was closed to all press—”
His voice died.
The words evaporated from his lips like spit on a hot skillet.
The color drained from Edward’s face until he looked like a corpse. His hand began to shake, the fountain pen slipping from his fingers and rolling across the polished wood, leaving a thin trail of black ink across the contract.
Renee let out a strangled, breathless gasp, her hands flying to her mouth.
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The room went dead silent. The only sound was the soft click of my heels against the hardwood floor as I walked into the room, head held high, my eyes locked onto the man who had ordered me locked in a cellar to rot.
“Good morning, Edward,” I said, my voice ringing clear and steady across the boardroom. “I apologize for the delay. Traffic on the tollway was murder.”
