Part 13: The Breach on the Driveway
"Everyone on the ground!" shouted Detective De Jong, drawing his service weapon and positioning himself in front of the window.
My mother screamed and pulled Luuk under the heavy oak kitchen table. Charlotte reacted like lightning; she grabbed a heavy cast-iron pan from the stove and positioned herself next to the hallway doorframe.
Outside, the first shots cracked. Bullets smashed through the wooden front door and shattered the glass of the hallway window. Shrapnel rained across the wooden floor.
"Mark?!" I screamed, ducked against the wall. "How are you still alive?!"
Through the broken window of the front door came the raspy, distorted voice of my ex-husband. "Did you really think a collapsed basement would stop me, Emma? I know that old brewery like the back of my hand! I crawled out through the old sewer shaft!"
He fired three more shots at the door lock. The oak door swung open with a loud bang.
Mark stepped into the hallway. He looked terrible: his clothes were burned, his skin covered in soot and blood, and his eyes wide with a manic fury. The two armed men behind him stayed on the porch to cover the street.
"Give me the key, Emma," Mark said in a hoarse voice. He aimed his pistol straight at my chest. "I know Sophie sent it to you. It's the only thing I need left."
Detective De Jong stepped out of the corner and shouted: "Police! Drop your weapon!"
Mark didn't even look at De Jong. With a quick, practiced movement, he fired a single shot. De Jong was hit in the shoulder and fell backward against the wall with a cry, his gun slipping from his hand and sliding across the floor over to us.
"Emma!" screamed my mother from under the table.
"Stay where you are!" snapped Mark at my mother. Then he looked back at me, his gun hand trembling with adrenaline. "The papers in that safe are worth millions on the black market. It contains the black bookkeeping of the Vance Group over the past thirty years. If I have those documents, I am untouchable! Give me that key!"
I looked at the small metal key tightly clenched in my palm. My nails bit into my skin.
"You destroyed my life," I said with a voice that was ice-cold and calm. "You made me believe I was crazy. You took my child from me. You used my sister until it broke her."
"And I'll shoot you without blinking an eye if you don't give me that key within three seconds!" shouted Mark.
"Three..." he counts.
Luuk peeked out from under the table. Our eyes crossed. In my son's eyes, I saw no fear anymore; I saw the determination he had inherited from his biological father, Gabriel, and from me.
"Two..."
At that moment, Charlotte flew out of the shadow of the hallway. With the heavy cast-iron pan, she struck the side of Mark's head with full force.
The sound of the blow echoed through the house. Mark staggered on his legs, his gun went off, and the bullet struck the ceiling.
I didn't hesitate for a second. I lunged forward, grabbed wounded Detective De Jong's service weapon off the floor, got to my feet on my knees, and aimed the barrel straight at Mark's chest.
"It's over, Mark," I said.
Mark lay on the floor, blood streaming from a wound on his temple. He looked at the barrel of the gun in my hands and laughed hoarsely.
"Then shoot, Emma," he lifted his head. "Do it. But you don't know what's in that safe. If you open that safe... you're not destroying me. You're destroying your own family."
"What do you mean?" I asked, my finger clenched on the trigger.
"Ask your mother!" screamed Mark. "Ask her who was driving the car that ran you off the road thirteen years ago! It wasn't Victor Vance! It wasn't any of the Vances!"
I stiffened. My gaze slowly drifted down to the kitchen table, where my mother sat on the floor.
My mother covered her face with her hands and began to sob heavily.
"Mom...?" I whispered.
"They didn't want the baby, Emma!" cried my mother. "Your father and I... we were afraid the Vance family would destroy us if they found out! Your father was behind the wheel that night! He wanted to stop you from going to Paris... it was an accident!"
My world collapsed for the umpteenth time. The betrayal didn't just come from the outside. It was soaked into the very foundations of my own childhood home.
In that fraction of a second of my confusion, Mark reached for his gun on the floor.
A shot cracked through the hallway.
But the bullet didn't come from Mark's weapon. Nor from mine.
Mark stiffened, his eyes wide open. He slowly fell forward onto the marble parquet of the hallway and moved no more.
Behind him, in the opening of the front door, stood a man in a long dark vest. He held a pistol with a silencer.
When the man took off his hat and stepped into the hallway light, I felt my breathing stop completely.
It was my father.
The man I had thought for thirteen years was buried in our village cemetery.
