Chapter 27 - Blood and Salt
A sudden, sharp metallic ping echoed from the perimeter fence outside.
Nicholas was moving before the sound even finished bouncing off the brick walls. He drew his weapon, kill-switching the flickering utility light in the office, plunging us into shadow.
"Drones," Nicholas hissed, pressing his back against the brick frame of the door. "High-altitude micro-surveillance. They found the boat."
"How?" Julianne snarled, cocking her pistol. "I wiped the transponder three nautical miles out!"
"They didn't track the boat, Julianne," my father groaned from the dark, struggling to sit up. He held up his left wrist. The faint, pulsing glow of a subdermal implant shone beneath his paper-thin skin. "Eleanor... she tagged me during the interrogation at the manor before the explosion. She let me escape. She let us all escape."
"You idiot!" Julianne lunged at him, but Nicholas intercepted her, slamming her back against the wall.
"Save the family reunion for later!" Nicholas growled in her face. "We have multiple vehicles pulling up the access road. Black Suburbans. No plates."
Through the cracked window, I saw the headlights cutting through the fog like predatory eyes. Four heavy SUVs barricaded the exit from the dockyard. Men in black tactical gear and Kevlar vests began spilling out, armed with suppressed assault rifles.
"They're not here to negotiate," I said, a strange, terrifying calm settling over my fear.
I looked down at my torn wedding dress. The white silk was ruined, stained with the soot of my father's sins and the blood of my husband's family. Eleanor had taken my hair. She had made me a spectacle. She had treated me like a pawn on a board she thought she owned.
"Nicholas," I said, my voice dropping into a register he had never heard from me before.
He looked at me through the shadows, surprised by the stillness in my eyes. "Clara?"
"Give me a weapon."
May you like
Julianne gave a cold, approving laugh from the corner. "Look at that. Maybe you have some Sterling blood in you after all."
"I am not a Sterling," I said, taking the heavy steel Glock from Nicholas's hand and racking the slide with a clean, lethal click. "And by the time today ends, Eleanor won't be one either."
