Alexia was weeping upstairs, her delicate rose of a heart surely aching with the loss. The mere thought of his sister's needless pain fueled his rage to greater intensity, making him want to strike out, but there was no one to submit to his anger, all the commanding officers and chief scientists dead, even his own personal staff. He'd watched it happen from the safety of the private mansion's secret monitor room, each tiny screen telling a different story of brutal suffering and pathetic incompetence. Almost everyone had died, and the rest had run like frightened rabbits; most of the island's planes were already gone. His personal cook had been the only survivor in the common receiving mansion, but she'd screamed so much that he himself had been forced to shoot her.

We're still here, though, safe from the unwashed hands of the world. The Ashfords will survive and prosper, to dance on the graves of our adversaries, to drink champagne from the skulls of their children.

He imagined dancing with Alexia, holding her close, waltzing to the dynamic music of their enemies' tortured screams… It would be nothing short of bliss, his twin's gaze locked to his, sharing the awareness of their superiority over the common man, over the stupidity of those who sought to destroy them. The question was, who had been responsible for the attack? Umbrella had many enemies, from legitimate rival pharmaceutical companies to private shareholders the loss of Raccoon City had been disastrous for the market to the few closet competitors of White Umbrella, their covert bioweapons research department. Umbrella Pharmaceutical, the brainchild of Lord Oswell Spencer and Alfred's own grandfather, Edward Ashford, was extremely lucrative, an industrial empire … but the real power lay with Umbrella's clandestine activities, the operations of which had become too vast to remain entirely unnoticed. And there were spies everywhere. Alfred clenched his fists, frustrated, his entire body a live wire of furious tension and was suddenly aware of Alexia's presence behind him, a trace of gardenia in the air. He'd been so intent on his emotional chaos that he hadn't even heard her approach. "You mustn't let yourself despair, my brother," she said gently, and stepped down to sit beside him. "We will prevail; we always have."