Marcus dragged Alistair toward the medical bay inside the interceptor, while Ethan pulled me toward a secondary hangar at the far end of the dockyards. He punched an emergency override into a rusted steel door, revealing an aerospace combat skiff—a low-slung, needle-nosed aircraft designed for rapid sub-orbital insertion.

Just as the engines began to whine to life with a high-pitched scream, footsteps echoed frantically behind us.

“Wait! Take me with you! You can’t leave me here!”

Patricia stumbled through the hangar doors, her stockings shredded, clutching a leather lockbox against her chest. She looked like a ghost that had crawled out of a grave, her face smeared with grime and mascara.

“Patricia,” Ethan said, not even turning around as he checked the cockpit diagnostics. “You have five seconds to disappear before I execute you for treason.

”

“You don’t understand, Ethan!” she shrieked, falling to her knees on the grease-stained concrete. “Vladimir… your grandfather… he didn’t just take her for her bloodline! I was the one who gave him the coordinates! I made a deal with him twenty-five years ago!”

The entire hangar went deathly silent, save for the hum of the aircraft’s fusion core.

Chap 55

Patricia held up the small leather lockbox with trembling hands, her teeth chattering uncontrollably from the cold and absolute terror.

“When your father died… Vladimir gave me an ultimatum,” she wept, her voice trembling with the pathetic weakness that had defined her entire selfish life. “He told me that if I didn’t surrender the child of the Vance bloodline when the time came, he would strip my bank accounts. He promised me forty million dollars and the sovereign estate in Monaco if I helped him harvest the bloodline cipher!”

I walked up beside Ethan,

my heart pounding so hard I felt it in my teeth. “You sold your own granddaughter?” I whispered, my voice shaking with a rage so profound it tasted like copper. “You tried to throw me and Lily out onto the street on Christmas night… because you were setting her up for a kidnapping?”

“I needed the money!” Patricia screamed, her eyes bulging with hysteria. “Your father left everything in trust for Ethan! I had nothing! Nothing except that house, and Ethan stole that from me too! Vladimir said he only needed a blood sample to unlock the vault! He said she wouldn’t be hurt!”

“You vile, disgusting monster,” I snarled, and without thinking, my fist connected squarely with Patricia’s jaw.

The blow sent her sprawling onto the concrete, her precious lockbox tumbling open.

Bundles of bearer bonds, forged passports, and an ancient obsidian thumb-drive spilled across the floor.

Ethan didn’t flinch. He bent down, picked up the obsidian drive, and crushed the lockbox beneath the heel of his combat boot, shattering the bonds and papers into worthless scraps.

“You traded my daughter’s life for Monaco,” Ethan said, staring down at his mother with pure, unadulterated disgust.

“Ethan, please… I’m your mother!” she sobbed, clutching her bleeding lip.

“You are nothing to me,” Ethan said coldly. “Marcus! Handcuff her to the water main. Leave her here for the local police to find alongside Malachar’s syndicate corpses. Let Interpol interrogate her until her lungs give out.”

“No! Ethan! You can’t do this to me! I’m a Vance!” she wailed as Marcus grabbed her by the arms,

dragging her toward the heavy cast-iron pipes. “Ethan! Clara, tell him! You’re a mother, you know what family means!”

Chap 56

The radar screens glowed an ominous crimson as we breached the airspace above the Crimean peninsula. Down below, the dark expanse of the Black Sea was churned into violent, foam-crested waves by an approaching winter storm.

“Telemetry picked up the submersible’s transponder, Sire,” our tactical officer spoke through the encrypted radio feed. “The *Nautilus-Nine* didn’t dock at a public harbor. They entered an abandoned Cold War submarine pen carved directly into the coastal cliffs beneath the ancient fortress of Sevastopol.”

“The Black Vault,” Ethan said, pulling up holographic schematics of the cliffside facility. “Built in 1962 by the Soviet Union, but funded entirely by the Vance sovereign treasury. It’s six hundred feet below solid granite, shielded from thermal detection and bunker-busting munitions.”

“How do we get in?” I asked, checking the battery packs on my kinetic assault rifle. My hands weren’t shaking anymore. The panic had burned away, leaving behind a cold, lethal clarity. My daughter was in that mountain, and I would tear the granite apart with my bare hands if I had to.

“A HALO jump directly into the sea breach,” Ethan replied, adjusting his tactical helmet. “The submersible has to surface inside the internal dry dock to offload passengers. There’s a six-minute window where the ventilation shafts vent hydro-gas before the blast doors seal. That is our only way through.”

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