Chapter 69 - The Fracture of an Empire
Hearing that cry was like having oxygen pumped back into my dying heart. Emily scooped our son into her arms, burying her face into his soft chest, weeping openly as she rocked him back and forth against her Kevlar vest.
"He's okay," she sobbed, laughing through her tears as she kissed Leo's forehead again and again. "He's breathing, Brian. He's safe. He's safe."
I collapsed back against the jet's interior bulkhead, pressing a gloved hand to my bleeding side, breathing in ragged, shuddering gasps. The baby’s cries were the sweetest music I had ever heard in my life.
Miller stepped inside the cabin from the open wing, lowering his carbine and kicking Vance’s unconscious form onto his stomach, immediately zip-tying his wrists behind his back with heavy plastic restraints.
"Ground perimeter secured," Miller reported, wiping rain from his tactical goggles. "State police and federal marshals just breached the north gate. Vance’s private flight crew has surrendered."
On the floor, Alistair Vance groaned, coughing up dark crimson onto the aircraft's cream-colored wool carpet. He slowly forced his head up, his once-regal face now swollen, bruised, and dripping blood.
"You think... you've won," Vance wheezed, his pale eyes glaring at me with poisonous venom. "You think you can just take your child... and walk away back to your little suburban fairy tale?"
I leaned forward, ignoring the throbbing pain in my ribs, and grabbed him by his silver hair, forcing his head back so he had to look at my wife and son.
"My fairy tale is real, Vance," I said, my voice dangerously low. "Your empire is dust. Julian is in federal custody with a shattered skull. Sterling is at the bottom of a dry dock pit. And you're going to spend whatever miserable years you have left inside a supermax cell for international kidnapping and treason."
Vance let out a dry, rattling laugh that turned into a wet cough. "You fool... I wasn't the head of the serpent. I was merely the executor. Did you really think... forty billion dollars in offshore assets... belonged only to Marcus Harrington?"
My grip on his hair tightened. "What are you talking about?"
"The Marseille ledger... isn't a record of theft, Brian," Vance whispered, blood bubbling between his teeth. "It's an operational payroll. Marcus Harrington was the treasurer for a syndicate that stretches from Wall Street to Frankfurt. The moment you confiscated that titanium plate... you didn't just inherit an estate. You inherited their debt."
Emily stepped forward, holding Leo securely against her shoulder with one arm, her other hand drawing her pistol and pressing the cold steel barrel directly against Vance’s forehead.
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"Name them," she ordered, her voice devoid of human mercy.
Vance looked up into her cold, beautiful eyes and smiled a hideous, bloody grin. "Check the encrypted partition on the plate, Mrs. Harrington. The final signature on the primary account... isn't mine. And it isn't Marcus's."
