Chapter 117 - The Atlantic Intercept
At forty-one thousand feet over the North Atlantic, the Gulfstream VI cut through the twilight at Mach 0.9.
The cabin was silent save for the hum of the Rolls-Royce engines and the clicking of Helena’s fingers as she disassembled, cleaned, and reassembled her tactical sidearm for the third time in two hours.
I sat in the forward leather seat, looking down at the vast, featureless expanse of black water below. Somewhere beneath those freezing waves lay the wreckage of the Learjet that had supposedly carried Marian Whitaker to her death twenty-five years ago. A wreckage deliberately placed there, stuffed with dental records and counterfeit bones, while the real architect walked into the shadows to construct her empire of extortion.
The encrypted satellite phone beside me chimed.
I picked it up and held it to my ear. "Speak."
"Eleanor," an exhausted, broken voice rasped over the receiver.
It was Victoria Vance.
Her haughty, imperious Boston accent was completely gone, replaced by the broken cadence of a woman who had spent the last twelve hours inside a federal interrogation room.
"Victoria," I said, keeping my tone devoid of emotion.
"They're taking everything, Eleanor," she wept, her voice trembling with hysteria. "The townhouses, the stables in Lexington, the investment portfolio... the marshals showed up with freeze orders signed by an emergency magistrate. Julian... where is Julian? He won't answer his satellite phone! Tell me he’s with you!"
I paused, letting the cold silence hang on the line for three long seconds.
"Julian is dead, Victoria."
A sharp, violent intake of breath sounded on the other end, followed by a suffocated wail that sounded barely human. "No... no, you're lying! He was in Germany! He was meeting the board! He was going to finalize the acquisition—"
"He was meeting my mother," I interrupted, my voice dropping like lead weights into water. "The woman you sold your son to thirty years ago. Marian shot him through the heart on a cliff overlooking the Rhine because he was no longer useful to her."
"Marian..." Victoria choked out, her words dissolving into ragged sobs. "She said... she promised me that you were weak, Eleanor. She said you would sign the papers, walk away in tears, and leave the trusts to Julian! She told me you were nothing but Arthur's broken little girl!"
"You should have looked more closely at the divorce papers your son threw at my feet, Victoria," I whispered coldly. "You spent seven years mocking my lineage, treating me like an interloper in your gilded drawing rooms, while my family's capital paid for the clothes on your back and the wine in your glass."
"Please, Eleanor... help me," the old matriarch begged, weeping openly now. "The federal prosecutors... they're saying Julian and I committed high treason... that we laundered cartel money through the Eclipse... I have nowhere to go! They've locked the gates of the estate!"
"Call Sloane Avery," I said with lethal calmness. "Perhaps your son's mistress has an extra room in the silver gown she wore to celebrate my humiliation."
I hung up the phone and pulled the SIM card from the chassis, snapping it in two between my fingers.
I tossed the plastic fragments into the waste receptacle.
Beside me, Helena looked up from her weapon, her expression grim but approving. "You have no pity left for them."
May you like
"Pity is an expenditure, Helena," I said, looking toward the cockpit door as the captain initiated our descent into the New York terminal control area. "And as of tonight, the Vance account is permanently closed."
***
