Chapter 106 - The Safe Haven in Bergen
Forty-eight hours later, the rain was falling in gray, relentless sheets over the commercial docks of Bergen, Norway.
The smell of brine, wet pine, and diesel exhaust hung thick in the cold air. Inside a dilapidated boat repair warehouse at the far end of the wharf, the only light came from the blue hiss of a soldering iron and the pale screen of a portable satellite workstation.
Ethan sat on an overturned crate, his shirt removed as he gritted his teeth while I pulled the last fragment of fiberglass shrapnel from his shoulder with medical forceps. He didn't make a sound, merely exhaling through his nose as the metal clicked into a stainless steel bowl.
"That's the last one," I said, dousing the puncture wound with iodine before taping a sterile gauze pad over his skin. "You should have let the medic at the safehouse look at it."
"Medics talk. Passports leave trails," Ethan replied, pulling a black woolen sweater over his bruised torso. "Besides, we don't have time. Turn on the broadcast."
I turned toward the monitor. A muted international news feed was playing an urgent report.
*“—Norwegian authorities continue to investigate the catastrophic explosion of the offshore platform in the North Sea. The platform, officially owned by an affiliate of the defunct Blackwood Logistics conglomerate, reportedly suffered a systemic gas blowout during decommissioning. Search and rescue operations have officially ended. No survivors have been recovered, including former Blackwood heiress Claire Blackwood, who was previously sought for questioning by international authorities…”*
"They officially declared us dead," Ethan noted, pouring two cups of bitter black coffee from a thermos. "That buys us seventy-two hours before their internal forensic accountants realize our bodies weren't in the wreckage."
"They declared me dead so they could execute the trust’s transfer clause," I said coldly, walking over to the workstation. "Julian is dead. Evelyn is in federal custody, stripped of her legal standing. I am legally deceased. That means the entire asset umbrella of the Blackwood bloodline automatically reverts to the primary trustee."
"The Archon Trust," Ethan said. "Do we have a name for the trustee?"
Before I could answer, an alert chime pinged from the terminal. The decrypted files from Julian’s drive had finished cataloging. But it wasn't a corporate document that opened.
It was a queued audio file, scheduled to deploy only upon the formal registration of my death certificate in the international maritime registry.
May you like
The label on the file read: *A Mother’s Prerogative.*
***
