Chapter 36 - When the Dead Brother Walks
Marcus didn't pull the trigger. He kept the green laser pinned to Elena’s chest for five agonizing seconds, the waves lifting her up and plunging her down against the freezing hull of the boat.
"Hand the case up first," Marcus ordered, his gravelly voice cutting through the thundering crash of the waves against the cave walls. "Slowly. If you drop it in the trench, we both die tonight."
Elena kept her right hand locked onto the boat’s safety line. With her left, she hoisted the dripping carbon-fiber core onto the wooden dock. Marcus snatched it up with one hand, his rifle never wavering from her forehead, and checked the digital lock on the side.
"Now climb," he said.
Elena hauled herself out of the surging black water, her boots slipping on the slick green moss covering the rocks. She collapsed onto her knees, shivering uncontrollably, her teeth chattering so hard they threatened to crack. She reached for the Glock at her hip, but Marcus casually stepped on her wrist with his heavy tactical boot, pinning her arm to the stone without crushing it.
He reached down, slid the firearm from her numb fingers, cleared the chamber with a single, practiced movement, and tossed the empty weapon into the inflatable boat.
"You're not working for Victoria," Elena gasped, spitting saltwater onto the rocks. "She told Christian she put three rounds in your skull and dumped you off Montauk."
"Victoria thinks a lot of things," Marcus said, keeping his eyes on the narrow iron staircase carved into the rock wall above them—the path leading down from the mansion. "She thought she killed you on your wedding day. She thought she killed Julian tonight. The Montgomerys are arrogant, Elena. Arrogant people leave clean-up work to men like me. And men like me keep receipts."
"Julian is dead," Elena said, her voice cracking with sudden, uncontrollable venom. "I saw him die. His neck—"
"Julian is currently strapped to a medical transport gurney in the back of an unmarked Coast Guard cutter three miles outside the territorial limit," Marcus interrupted, his voice devoid of emotion.
Elena stopped breathing. The world around her seemed to slow down, the roaring of the surf muffled as if she had been plunged back underwater. "What did you say?"
"You think Julian was an innocent victim in this?" Marcus laughed—a dry, bitter rasp. "Julian planned tonight’s escape six months ago. The neurotoxin in the bedroom was calibrated down to the microgram. It mimics clinical death: zero pulse, pupil dilation, drop in core body temperature for exactly ninety minutes. He needed you to run with the black box so Victoria and Christian would track *you*, not him."
The revelation hit Elena harder than any bullet.
Julian. Her devoted, terrified husband. The man who wept on the balcony, who swore he was trying to save their child from his monstrous family.
He hadn't been defending her. He had turned her into the rabbit for the hounds to chase.
"He used me as a decoy," Elena whispered, the cold suddenly leaving her veins, replaced by a volcanic, terrifying heat.
"He used both of us," Marcus corrected, pulling an encrypted military tablet from his vest and tapping the screen. A tracking dot blinked on a nautical chart: a mid-sized patrol cutter moving south toward international waters at twenty-two knots. "He told me he would wire the escrow keys once he cleared the harbor. But the moment his cutter passed the lightship, my accounts were frozen. Julian doesn't leave loose ends, Elena. He’s his mother’s true son. Christian is the brute; Julian is the serpent."
A loud, metallic crash echoed from the top of the sea cave stairs.
A flashlight beam cut through the mist. Christian’s voice, raw and ragged with rage, echoed down the stone passage: "Marcus! You traitorous piece of garbage! I know you're down there! The whole perimeter is sealed!"
Marcus looked at Elena, his scarred face hardening into a grim sneer. "Christian’s men have three assault boats coming into the cove mouth right now. We have two minutes before they bottle this cavern up. Do you want to die down here like an abandoned wife, or do you want to take Julian’s boat and settle the bill?"
Elena pushed herself to her feet, ignoring the screaming pain in her muscles, ignoring the phantom pulse in her belly.
May you like
"Hand me a rifle," Elena said.
***
