Chapter 65 - The Midnight Sovereign
The world narrowed to the flickering numbers on the bomb and the static scream on the radio.
Forty-six minutes left before forty pounds of military-grade explosive shattered the bedrock and sent the lake house into the depths of Blackwood Lake.
And out on the mountain highway, the woman who had orchestrated my family's ruin was already free, covered in the blood of dead marshals.
"Riley, we have to cut the lines and evacuate the property," Thomas said, pulling a wire-stripping tool from his tactical pouch.
"No," I said, my voice turning dead, quiet, and absolutely resolute.
"If we cut the wrong relay, the pressure switch triggers instantly—this is a Swiss military dual-circuit design."
"I saw these blueprints in the titanium cylinder files."
I knelt down over the dark pit, shining the beam directly onto the junction box.
"There’s an override terminal built into the main breaker box in the grandfather’s underground bunker beneath the boathouse," I said.
"To disarm this crate, we have to key the sovereign patent directly into the terminal from the boathouse server."
"That leaves us less than thirty minutes to run across the open shoreline and back," Thomas said, glancing at the rain-lashed windows.
"And Clara knows that terminal exists," I whispered.
Through the howling wind outside, the sound of heavy diesel engines echoed down the valley road.
Headlights pierced the fog through the pine trees, sweeping across the front lawn of the lake house.
Two armored black SUVs turned off their sirens, sliding to a halt in the driveway where my mother’s church moving truck had parked just days ago.
The doors flew open in unison.
Six heavily armed private contractors stepped out into the pouring rain, forming a protective perimeter around the lead vehicle.
From the passenger seat of the SUV stepped Clara Von Habsburg.
Her face was splattered with blood from the bridge ambush, her white cashmere coat torn at the shoulder, but her eyes held the rabid, unhinged light of a dying predator with nothing left to lose.
She didn't run.
She didn't try to escape to Canada.
She came back to Blackwood Lake to watch the bedrock burn with me inside it.
In her right hand, she held an encrypted satellite remote detonator—the manual trigger that could bypass the countdown clock at any second.
"Riley Vance!" her voice screeched through the storm, distorted by rage and madness.
"Bring me the cylinder, or I turn this entire mountain into a graveyard right now!"
I looked down into the dark cellar pit at the glowing numbers: 00:38:12.
I looked at Thomas, whose eyes were fixed on the front door with cold, lethal determination.
I pulled the fresh thirty-round magazine from my tactical belt, slammed it into the carbine resting against the hearth, and chambered a round with a violent, metallic click.
"Thomas, get to the boathouse through the drainage tunnel," I whispered, my heartbeat steady as glacial ice.
"Key in the sovereign protocol."
"What about you, Riley?" Thomas asked, staring at me with sudden panic.
I walked toward the front entryway, my shadow stretching long and dark across the floorboards my grandfather had laid with his bare hands.
"I'm going to walk out on that porch one last time," I said.
"And show Clara Von Habsburg what happens when the daughter of Blackwood decides she is done surviving."
I kicked open the heavy oak door, stepped out into the howling storm, and leveled my rifle directly into the headlights of the waiting wolves.
May you like
Clara raised the detonator with a demonic grin, her thumb resting on the red switch.
Neither of us blinked as the thunder tore the sky apart.
