Chapter 27 - The Mother’s Reckoning
My hand moved on pure maternal instinct.
Before Julianna’s two bodyguards could raise their weapons, I reached into Marcus’s open medical kit strapped to his belt and pulled out the pneumatic bone-marrow extraction needle—a six-inch titanium rod designed to pierce solid bone.
“Take one step closer,” I said, my voice dead, flat, devoid of any fear, “and I will drive this six inches into your windpipe.”
Julianna didn’t flinch. She let out that same crystalline, mocking laugh. “Such fierce maternal theater. But you don’t have time for heroics, Lena. Look at your daughter.”
Through the open flap of the blanket, Clara gave a weak, breathless whimper. Her tiny fingernails were turning a dark, bruised blue.
“Her respiratory centers are beginning to fail,” Julianna said smoothly, resting a gloved hand on the hood of the armored truck. “In six hours, the damage to her cerebral cortex will be irreversible. You want the counter-agent? The briefcase in your doctor’s hand is useless without Lucian Vance’s biometric print.”
“Where is he?” I demanded, stepping forward, unyielding, keeping Mateo and Clara shielded behind my body.
“He’s waiting at the Castiglione private airstrip on Lake Michigan,” Julianna replied, tilting her head. “He has agreed to a trade. You give us Clara, and we give you the stabilizing cure for her condition... along with Dante’s body, so you may bury him with proper American honors.”
My stomach dropped through the earth. “Dante is alive.”
“He had three bullets in him when Lucian’s men dragged him out of the safehouse,” Julianna smiled cruelly. “He might still have a pulse. For another hour or two. Lucian wanted to watch him bleed out slowly on the hangar floor while he welcomed his daughter home.”
The world narrowed to a pinprick of pure, blistering rage.
Five years ago, I thought my life was defined by Dante Vance’s cold boardrooms and expensive penthouse prisons. I thought I was the fragile art curator who had married a monster out of love, only to find lipstick on his collar and lies in his ledger. But standing in that filthy alleyway, smelling the river mud and the poisoned scent of gardenia, holding two innocent lives against my breaking heart, the fragile woman vanished forever.
“Marcus,” I said without looking back.
“Yes, Lena?”
“Get in the truck.”
Before Julianna’s guards could comprehend my words, I whipped the pneumatic needle across the nearest guard’s throat, slicing through the soft tissue beneath his jaw. Blood sprayed in a wide scarlet arc across Julianna’s white cashmere coat. The second guard lunged for his sidearm, but Marcus tackled him with the full weight of his body, driving him into the icy mud.
I grabbed the fallen guard’s suppressed Glock from the ground, leveled it directly at Julianna’s pristine, horrified face, and pulled the slide back.
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“You’re going to drive us to that airstrip, Julianna,” I whispered, pressing the freezing barrel against her forehead. “And if my daughter stops breathing before we arrive, you will swallow every bullet in this magazine.”
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