Chapter 76 - A Mother's Counter-Offensive
Ten hours later, our private Dassault Falcon sliced through the thick, snow-laden clouds over the Swiss Alps, banking sharply toward a private airfield outside Samedan.
The storm that had battered New York was nothing compared to the blinding alpine blizzard raging below. The white peaks of the Engadin Valley rose around us like ancient, frozen sentinels.
In the main cabin, the family was fully mobilized. Leo and Maya sat surrounded by satellite up-links, monitoring every frequency emanating from the luxury ski resort of St. Moritz, twelve miles down the mountain.
"Julian is getting nervous," Maya reported, tapping her earpiece. "I’ve tapped his suite’s landline. He’s made four frantic calls to Eleanor in the last hour. He’s drinking heavily, terrified that the Swiss Federal Police are closing in."
"What did Eleanor tell him?" I asked, fastening the straps of my thermal tactical jacket.
"She told him to stay put, keep his mouth shut, and snort whatever he needs to stay calm until Tristan arrives," Maya said, her lip curling in disgust. "Tristan’s plane is running forty minutes behind schedule due to the storm. They haven't linked up yet."
"A forty-minute window," Alexander said, loading an MP5 submachine gun with subsonic rounds. "That’s all we need. We insert by snowmobile into the service entrance of the Grand Hotel, extract Julian before Tristan touches down, and use Julian’s biometric authorization to lock down the Zurich accounts permanently."
"No extraction," I said, looking out the frosted oval window as the runway lights emerged from the whiteout.
Alexander paused, looking at me. "Katherine, if we don't extract him, how do we get the biometric key?"
"Julian is a broken man, Alexander. If we take him by force, Tristan will simply execute a bypass protocol using Eleanor's secondary signature," I explained, turning to face my team. "We don't take Julian. We break him. We make him realize that the family he worshipped his entire life views him as nothing more than a sacrificial lamb."
Liam looked up from his weapon check, understanding immediately. "You're going to make Julian betray them willingly."
"Julian spent his entire life desperate for Eleanor’s approval and Arthur’s crown," I said. "He threw me away because he thought it guaranteed his inheritance. When he realizes that Tristan and Eleanor plan to liquidate the accounts and leave him to take the criminal fall for the Apex Syndicate... he will hand us the keys himself."
The Falcon’s wheels touched down on the icy runway with a muffled screech of brakes and reverse thrusters.
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Within fifteen minutes, two high-powered mountain snowmobiles roared out of the hangar into the swirling whiteout of the blizzard, cutting through the pine forests toward St. Moritz.
The predator was no longer Eleanor Vance. The predator was a mother who had crossed an ocean to finish what they had started.
