Chapter 29 - THE RECKONING AT THE CLIFF EDGE
Owen didn't come alone.
From the shattered ventilation shafts above the observation room dropped three heavily armed operatives dressed in unmarked tactical gear—the private security wing of the Sterling Board of Directors, mobilized the moment Julian’s encrypted drive connected to the New York terminal.
Gunfire ripped through the underground lab, flashes of orange and blue muzzle fire illuminating the sterile white corridors. Concrete dust exploded into the air, blinding the security team.
Christian grabbed Julian by the collar, throwing the boy behind a heavy steel instrument cart as bullets ricocheted off the marble pedestals.
"Move! To the back service tunnel!" Christian yelled, pulling Julian through the shattered glass into the medical bay.
In the center of the room, amidst the carnage of shredded monitors and sparking wires, Arthur Sterling’s bed lay overturned. The old man was on the floor, his breathing ragged, his hand feebly clutching at Christian’s ankle.
Christian looked down at the ghost who had engineered thirty years of terror.
Arthur’s lips moved, dry and bloodless. "Forgive... me..."
"There's no forgiveness here," Christian said cold, tearing his leg from his father's dying grip.
He looked across the room. Eleanora was gone.
The heavy iron door leading to the cliffside maintenance platform was swinging open, the roaring gale of the South Atlantic howling into the lab.
Christian took off running through the rain-lashed darkness of the tunnel, bursting out onto the sheer rock precipice two hundred feet above the raging ocean.
The Antarctic storm battered the cliffs, freezing spray drenching everything in ice. Eleanora stood at the edge of the catwalk, clinging to the iron railing, clutching a titanium briefcase against her chest—the offline cold-storage drive containing the encrypted access codes to the offshore accounts.
"It's over, Mother!" Christian shouted against the screaming wind, stepping onto the metal walkway.
Eleanora turned to face him. Her silver hair was whipped wild by the gale, her ivory coat soaked and heavy. She looked at Christian, not with fear, but with a terrifying, venomous laughter.
"It will never be over, Christian!" she screamed, her voice competing with the roar of the sea below. "Do you think Arthur and I only built one vault? Do you think Julian was the only redundancy?"
Christian stopped dead in his tracks. "What are you talking about?"
Eleanora raised her chin, looking down at the dark, roiling ocean below.
"You think you won because you exposed Clara? Because you jammed a scanner?" She smiled, cold and triumphant. "Check the nursery in the lower basement, Christian. Go look at what the Argentine syndicate was cultivating while you were playing CEO in Manhattan."
With a final, mocking laugh, Eleanora Vance Sterling leaned backward into the empty air.
May you like
Christian lunged forward, his fingers scraping against the wet fabric of her coat, but the wind tore her away. She fell into the pitch-black abyss, swallowed instantly by the roaring waves two hundred feet below.
***
