Chapter 21 - The Bloodstained Crown on the Brink of Death
The brass gaff hook cleaved through the shrieking gale, whistling like an executioner’s scythe.
Elena didn’t flinch. In the half-second between life and oblivion, her muscle memory—forged in forty-eight minutes of freezing Atlantic salt water and baptized in the venom of tetrodotoxin—took absolute control. She didn’t retreat. Retreating meant slipping on the rain-slick iron grating and tumbling two hundred feet into the jagged fangs of the reef below.
Instead, Elena stepped directly *into* the strike.
She threw her left forearm upward, catching the haft of the hook against the hard bone of her wrist. The blunt force sent a shock of blinding agony up her arm, but the curved iron barb merely grazed her cheekbone, slicing a hairline ribbon of crimson through the rain. Before Victoria could wrench the hook back for a killing thrust, Elena slammed the heavy barrel of the snub-nosed revolver straight into the center of Victoria’s ruined, fire-scorched jaw.
The wet crack of cartilage echoed over the roar of the surf. Victoria stumbled backward against the outer iron rail of the lantern gallery, her breath hissing out in a spray of blood and spit.
Down below, the sniper teams fired.
High-caliber suppressed rounds tore through the sheet metal of the lighthouse cupola. Three tracer lines punched through Victoria’s heavy cashmere coat, blowing wet crimson blossoms across her chest and shoulder. The kinetic impact slammed the matriarch against the railing, bending her spine over the sheer drop.
Yet, Victoria did not fall.
Her claws clamped onto the cold painted iron, her one remaining blue eye wide, feverish, and burning with an unholy, triumphant ecstasy. Even as blood bubbled from the corners of her mouth, painting her porcelain teeth red, she began to laugh. A wet, rattling laugh that defied the lead tearing her organs to shreds.
"Look at you," Victoria coughed, blood spilling over her scorched chin. "You didn't scream. You didn't beg. You stepped into the teeth of the wolf."
"Give me the master key, Victoria," Elena rasped, stepping forward, the revolver steady in both hands, leveled directly between Victoria's eyes. Rain plastered Elena’s dark hair to her temples. Her wedding ring, still lodged on her left hand, glinted cold and dull in the sweep of the revolving lantern light. "The trust funds. The manifest for the offshore fleet. Where is it?"
"The trust?" Victoria wheezed, her grip on the railing slipping an inch as her strength ebbed. Her ruined face twisted into an expression of grotesque, maternal tenderness. "You think this was about money, Elena? You naive, beautiful little scavenger. I have ninety million dollars sitting in an untraceable escrow in Zurich... and it was never meant for Julian. Julian was the bait. Christian was the shield. But you... you survived the ocean."
Victoria raised her trembling left hand. In her palm lay not a key, but a thumb drive encased in waterproof titanium, etched with the Montgomery crest.
"Take it," Victoria whispered, her voice failing under the rush of blood filling her lungs. "Take it, and inherit the empire. But remember what I told you... the moment you log into that ledger, the cartel doesn't see a victim. They see Victoria Montgomery. They will hunt you across every continent on this earth."
Below them, the sound of heavy steel doors being breached echoed up the lighthouse shaft. Shouted commands in French and English cut through the storm. Julian’s private mercenary extraction team had arrived.
"He's here to kill us both, my dear," Victoria hissed, her fingers uncurling to let the drive dangle over the abyss. "Catch."
She released the drive.
Elena lunged, her fingers snapping shut around the cold titanium cylinder a split second before it plunged into the void. But as her momentum carried her against the railing, Victoria’s blood-slicked hand shot out, locking around Elena’s collar like a steel shackle.
"Welcome to the family," Victoria whispered.
May you like
With a final, demonic surge of spite, Victoria threw her weight backward, dragging Elena over the waist-high rail into the howling, empty dark.
***
Related Stories
