Heidi laughed loudly before throwing the blade at Gabriel.
He jerked back, slamming the knife away with the rifle, sending the blade clattering to the floor. “Now you have no choice but to let her go.”
Heidi laughed again and wrenched one of the medieval axes from off the wall. “You were saying, Gabriel?”
“This is insane, Heidi,” he said. “Release her.”
“You can’t tell me what to do!” Heidi shrieked, waving the ax over her head. The sharp blade glinted in the light of the great hall, the shiny metal a promise of pain and death. “This castle is mine now. The second I get rid of Jane, I’ll win.”
“That’s why you killed Otto,” Jane forced out as tears pricked the back of her eyes. “To win the castle.”
“Poor, stupid Otto,” Heidi said in a sing-song voice. “He had no idea that I was Friedrich’s when I first started working here. None of them did. Not even Friedrich himself.”
Jane started struggling to get free again. “Is that why you decided to work here? For revenge?”
“I never knew who my father was,” Heidi said, yanking so hard at Jane’s hair that Jane cried out in pain. “My mother wouldn’t tell me. Every time I asked she came up with some story. That he was a soldier. A diplomat. Her university boyfriend. All lies!”
“Let’s strike a deal here, Heidi,” Gabriel said. “Let’s come up with the best way to keep Jane safe. You can have the castle. It’s yours.”
“We won’t fight you on it,” Jane said in agreement. As much as she had dreamed of the castle, it wasn’t worth dying for. And it wasn’t worth losing Gabriel either.
“Liars!” Heidi shouted. “All of you are liars. Just like my mother. She lied for years until I found my birth certificate. Found the truth. I didn’t belong in some shitty little hovel in Geneva. I was a nobleman’s daughter. Me!”
“Heidi, please put the ax down,” Jane begged.
“I’m a nobleman’s daughter. You don’t get to order me around,” Heidi snapped. “But did my father want me? No. The old fool. All those years he was sending my mother money to keep her quiet. Not enough to get us out of that horrid little apartment. Only enough to eat. Daddy didn’t want his rich friends knowing he had a love child with some tourist he met so long ago. Well I’ll show you, Daddy. I’ll show you.”
Jane shoved herself off Heidi with all her might, wrenching free of the deranged young woman’s grip.
“Where do you think you’re going, you bitch?” Heidi swung the ax, the blade singing as Jane jumped away just in time.
“The castle is yours,” Jane forced out. “I’ll sign away my rights to it. I swear.”
“More lies!” Heidi let out a loud shriek that seemed to shake the entire castle. “I worked my way into the castle. Nobody knew that the meek little maid was a von Westen. Everyone ordering me about when they should have been bowing down to me. I did everything. I even read to Daddy when he got sick. But he couldn’t even see that I was his daughter. I looked just like him and he couldn’t see.”
Jane’s heart froze in her chest. “What the… You killed Friedrich, didn’t you?”
“I smothered him with a pillow a few months ago,” Heidi admitted as she took a menacing step towards Jane. “He was dying already. I did him a favor and put him out of his misery. I told him who I was right before he died. You should have seen the look on his wrinkled old face.” Heidi laughed, the sound echoing through the hall.
Jane stumbled backwards, desperate to get away from Heidi and the ax in her hands.
Her gaze shifted for a moment and she saw Gabriel lift his gun to point it at Heidi. It was clear that he was trying to find a way to take a clean shot without getting Jane hurt.
Swallowing hard, Jane realized that she had to keep Heidi talking. That was the only way to keep her distracted long enough for Gabriel to stop her. “So you’ve been planning this for months?”
“For years. I was hired as a maid so that I could get closer to my father. But then I thought I wanted more than that. I wanted this castle, and so I decided I was going to kill him to get it,” Heidi said with a cruel smile. “But then stupid Otto brought out Daddy’s stupid will. Some strangers were going to get this castle before me. How is that fair?”
“It isn’t fair,” Jane said, her voice shaking.
“Otto started making all these phone calls to other heirs,” Heidi spat out. “He invited you and Gabriel’s client. I decided I was going have to get rid of everyone in the way of me getting my castle. But only you were coming here, Jane. So I had to be incredibly careful how I got rid of everyone. Otto needed to go, of course. I was starting to suspect he knew who I was, and I couldn’t let that secret get out until the time was right. First I had to die so none of you would see me coming.”
“You faked your own death. Fell down the stairs—”
“I didn’t fall,” Heidi said with a roll of her eyes as she took another swing with the ax.
Jane screamed, scrambling out of the way as the blade snagged the fabric of her coat. “You didn’t?”
“I just took a dose of the Night’s Bane, dropped the bowl of stew, and lay down on the floor,” Heidi responded, rolling her eyes again. “Stupid Berta fell for it. You all did. Thank you for taking my body outside, by the way. It made it so easy to hide from you while I went through the secret passages in the castle.”
“Where is Berta?” Jane asked desperately. “You took her, didn’t you?”
“I came into the kitchen to strangle her but she started babbling about a password. Babbling that Otto had secrets
