Chapter 97 - The Bell Tower Escape
Emma froze on the spiral stairs, the damp cold of the stone wall pressing against her shoulder. "What did you say, Lily?"
"The names on the parchment," Lily whispered, her small fingers clutching Emma's collar. "There was a list of witnesses who signed the covenant. Grandmother's name was glowing green at the very bottom. It had today's date next to it."
Clara, who was three steps ahead, turned around sharply, her face illuminated by the faint red glow of an emergency exit marker. "She's right. Mother never stayed behind at the family estate. When you called your lawyer that night—the night of the birthday—you didn't just trigger an audit. You triggered an extraction protocol. The family put her on a private medical transport out of Northolt within three hours."
"She made my daughter cry over a cheap plastic box," Emma hissed, her voice trembling with a rage that eclipsed even the sound of the gunfire echoing from the hall below. "She told Lily she had no mother, no name, and no future. And she came here to watch her die?"
"She came here to claim the override code herself," Clara said darkly. "She knew that if the Council executed you and Lily, she could step in as the surviving regent and claim the sovereign ledger. She sacrificed you both twenty years ago, Emma. Did you really think she'd hesitate today?"
A heavy thud vibrated through the stone steps beneath their feet. Down at the base of the tower, the iron gate was being hit with hydraulic breaching tools. The screech of tearing metal reverberated up the spiral chimney.
"They're through the gate!" Daniel barked, pushing past them to take the lead. "Keep moving! Up to the service bridge!"
They burst out of the spiral stairs onto a narrow, windswept wooden catwalk that connected the monastery’s central bell tower to the fortified sea wall overlooking the northern lagoon. Rain lashed against them in sheets, the dark waters of the Venetian lagoon churning twenty feet below against the jagged rocks of the breakwater.
Tied to an iron ring beneath the catwalk was a low-profile, black carbon-fiber pursuit launch—its twin inboard engines already idling with a low, predatory rumble.
Standing at the stern of the boat, wrapped in a heavy wool coat, with an umbrella held over her head by a private security guard, stood an elderly woman.
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Even through the lashing rain and darkness, Emma recognized the sharp, aristocratic silhouette instantly.
It was her mother.
