Chapter 26 - The Red Light Syndicate
"Signal breach!" Claire hissed, lunging toward the console.
On the monitors, the digital telemetry map of St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital flickered violently. The telemetry feeds from Lily’s pediatric monitors flatlined, replaced by a looping digital graphic: a stylized, crimson coiled serpent—the insignia of the Sterling Private Equity Group.
"They're moving her," Claire said, her fingers flying across the mechanical keyboard at terrifying speed. "Arthur’s private medical transport just pulled into the underground ambulance bay at St. Jude's. They’re extracting Lily before the federal marshals can issue a protective custody warrant."
"What about Martha?" Julian demanded, lunging forward and grabbing Claire’s wrist. Her skin was freezing, her pulse racing like a hummingbird’s wings. "Martha was on Victoria’s payroll! I saw her on the video feed!"
Claire ripped her arm from his grasp, glaring at him with pure venom. "Martha isn't Victoria’s payroll, Julian. Martha Vance is my mother’s sister! She’s been my inside operative in that house for eighteen months! She was supposed to secure Lily the second the broadcast went live!"
Julian felt his reality splintering into a thousand irreconcilable shards. "Martha... your aunt? But Martha held up the phone... she showed me Victoria on the plane!"
"Because Victoria compromised her forty minutes ago!" Claire slammed her fist onto the steel table, her eyes wild with rage. "Arthur intercepted Martha’s encrypted relay to this bunker. They offered Martha a choice: bring Lily to their private hangar at Westchester County Airport for the extraction, or watch her grandchildren in Boston die in house fires. Martha sold us out!"
Julian drew the Glock, racking the slide with a deafening metallic snap that echoed like a gunshot through the vaulted cathedral.
"I don't give a damn about your patent, Claire," Julian growled, his voice guttural, raw, stripped of all humanity. "I don't give a damn about the Sovereign Protocol, the Sterling fortune, or the war between you and your psychopathic family. I am getting my daughter. And if you stand in my way, I will put a bullet between your eyes."
Claire stared at the barrel leveled at her forehead. Instead of fear, a slow, terrible smile curved the edges of her lips.
"You always were too sentimental to survive in this family, Julian," she whispered.
May you like
From the shadows behind the water cistern, two laser sights—crimson, precise, and lethal—locked onto the center of Julian’s chest.
"Meet my extraction team, darling," Claire said softly. "You're coming with me to the airport. But you aren't leaving with Lily. Lily is coming with me to Geneva. Her blood belongs to science."
