Chapter 72 - Split-Second Execution
There was no choice. Amanda believed she had trapped me in a classic moral dilemma—a cruel psychological puzzle designed to test whether the blood of the brother who had mocked, humiliated, and discarded me was worth more than the woman who had rebuilt my shattered soul.
She had miscalculated completely.
I didn't waste a single heartbeat looking back at the tablet screen where Jason was blubbering like a terrified child, his tears mixing with the bilge water rising around his ankles. Jason had made his bed with snakes for ten years, basking in the glow of Thanksgiving insults, stealing our inheritance, and cheering every time I was kicked into the dirt.
"Sniper, three o'clock, tower observation deck!" I roared into the tactical comms clipped to Harris’s vest, my body moving on raw instinct before the words had even cleared my throat.
I lunged straight for the steel reinforced door of the VIP lounge where Emily and Leo were barricaded under heavy federal guard. Across the rain-slicked asphalt, Harris was already barking orders into his radio, his Marshals fanning out in low-profile tactical sprints.
"Countersniper, engage tower three! Engage now!" Harris bellowed.
Through the heavy storm, a sharp, muffled *crack* echoed from the perimeter berm—the US Marshals' marksman taking his shot. High above on the observation platform, the thick plate-glass window spider-webbed into a violent white burst. The crimson laser dot that had been dancing across the back of Emily’s skull violently jerked upward toward the ceiling, shearing through the acoustic tiles in a wild arc.
I slammed my shoulder into the reinforced door of the lounge, bursting inside. "Emily! Down!"
Emily didn't freeze. She had already reacted the microsecond the glass outside rattled. She was pressed flat against the reinforced concrete baseboard behind an overturned mahogany conference table, her body curled completely around Leo, shielding our four-month-old son with her entire life. Leo let out a startled wail, but he was unharmed.
Her eyes met mine—wide, fierce, and burning with a lethal focus that matched my own.
"Are you hit?" I panted, dropping to my knees and wrapping my arms around them both, feeling the frantic, steady beat of her heart against my chest.
"No," Emily breathed, her voice steadying with iron resolve as she gripped my forearm. "I caught the reflection off the tarmac puddle a second before the window shattered. Brian, what about Jason?"
I felt a cold knot tighten in my gut. Through the open tactical comm in Harris’s ear piece outside the doorway, Amanda’s voice filtered through the static from the tablet left on the ambulance tailgate:
*"Two minutes remaining, Brian. The scuttle valve is wide open. Listen to him squeal."*
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Over the line, Jason’s muffled, pathetic shriek cut through the engine noise of the approaching patrol boats: *"Brian! Please! I’m your brother! Don't let her drown me! Brian!"*
Harris stepped into the doorway, his weapon drawn, rain dripping from the brim of his tactical cap. His expression was grim as stone. "Coast Guard cutter *Vigilant* is four miles off Minot's Ledge. They can’t reach him before that timer hits zero, Brian. Amanda rigged the boat’s ballast tanks with thermite. If we don’t override the transmitter from here, he’s going to the bottom of the Atlantic."
