MY MILLIONAIRE MOTHER-IN-LAW PUSHED ME OFF HER YACHT ON MY WEDDING DAY—THEN WAITED AT THE LADDER TO FINISH THE JOB / Chapter 43 / 100

Chapter 43 - The Deliverance in the Eye of the Gale

The world was spinning, black and weightless.

The impact with the wave didn't destroy them. By some miracle of aerodynamics and the pilot’s dying reflex, the Sikorsky auto-rotated into the crest of a massive swell rather than pancaking into the trough. The aircraft skipped twice across the freezing water like a flat stone before the battered fuselage lifted, shuddering violently as its single surviving turbine fought the screaming wind.

Inside the dark, vibrating cabin, the pilot slumped over the collective, a jagged piece of rotor shrapnel embedded in his throat.

Marcus, his face pale as chalk, dragged the dead pilot out of the seat and seized the dual flight controls. "I’ve got cyclic! I’ve got collective!" he roared over the screaming turbine alarms. "We’re flying on one engine and half a rudder! We have maybe twelve minutes of fuel before the main tank empties through the puncture!"

"Just fly!" Christian shouted back from the rear deck. He had collapsed against the bulkhead, tearing off his soaked jacket to reveal a three-inch gash across his chest.

Elena was on the aluminum floor, wedged between two troop seats. Her hands were clamped over her belly, her breath coming in ragged, shallow sobs. The contractions were no longer coming in waves; they were a continuous, crushing vice.

"Christian..." she wept, the agony blinding her. "She’s coming. Now. Oh God, Christian, she’s coming!"

Christian crawled to her side on hands and knees, ignoring the searing pain in his ribs. He looked down at Elena. Her face was soaked in sweat and salt spray, her lips blue from hypothermia, her eyes wide with primal, animal terror.

"I've got you, Elena," Christian said, his voice trembling slightly before he forced it into soldier’s iron. "Listen to me! Look at my eyes! I delivered calves in Montana when I was sixteen. I pulled two babies out of rubble in Fallujah. You are not dying tonight, and neither is she. Do you hear me?"

"I can't... I don't have the strength..."

"You survived forty fathoms of black water," Christian snarled gently, peeling away her wet trousers and tearing open an emergency medical kit secured to the bulkhead wall. "You survived Victoria Montgomery. You survived my bastard brother. You have all the strength in the world. Now push!"

Elena screamed.

The sound ripped from the depths of her soul, cutting through the shuddering roar of the dying turbine. She gripped Christian’s bloody hands, her knuckles cracking, her fingernails tearing through his flesh. She arched her back off the vibrating deck plate as a blinding, tearing inferno consumed her lower body.

Outside, the Sikorsky slammed through a monstrous wall of black cloud. Lightning cracked across the windshield, illuminating the churning jaws of the Atlantic below.

"Marcus! Hold her steady!" Christian yelled, sterile clamps in his teeth, his bare hands working in the flickering red emergency cabin lights.

"I can’t hold her!" Marcus shouted from the cockpit, wrestling the vibrating stick. "The hydraulic pressure is zero! We’re coming down! We’re crossing a shoreline—I see breakers! I see cliffs!"

"PUSH, ELENA! ONE MORE TIME! PUSH!"

Elena threw her head back, biting her lip until blood filled her mouth. With every remaining fiber of her existence, with every heartbeat she had stolen back from the sea, she pushed.

A sudden, terrifying release washed over her. The unbearable pressure vanished, replaced by an eerie, ringing silence inside her skull.

Christian caught the tiny, slippery, fragile life in his trembling, calloused hands.

For two agonizing seconds, there was no sound except the dying whine of the helicopter’s jet engine.

Then, piercing through the fury of the gale and the roar of the sea, came a sharp, indignant, furious wail.

Elena fell back against the deck, gasping for air, tears cutting warm trails through the dried salt on her face.

Christian wrapped the baby girl in a clean wool survival blanket, tying off the umbilical cord with surgical silk. He looked down at the tiny, red-faced infant, his throat working convulsively, a single tear cutting through the dried blood on his cheek.

"She’s breathing," Christian whispered, his voice cracking. "She’s whole, Elena. Look at her. Look at your daughter."

He laid the tiny, warm bundle on Elena’s bare chest. Elena wrapped her shivering arms around the infant, burying her face into the damp, dark curls that crowned her daughter's head. The baby smelled of salt, blood, and miraculous life.

"Scarlett," Elena choked out through her sobs. "Her name is Scarlett."

Suddenly, the helicopter’s single turbine gave a deafening metallic screech and seized. The interior lights flickered and died.