Chapter 14 - THE WITNESS WHO REFUSED TO DIE
Marcus survived because the bullet struck below his shoulder.
Harlan had aimed for his heart.
I pressed my hands against the wound until paramedics arrived.
Marcus remained conscious.
“Do not let Father tell them I changed my mind,” he whispered.
“You’re going to testify.”
“If I don’t, play the recording.”
“What recording?”
His eyes closed before he answered.
Surgeons operated for four hours.
Ruiz searched Marcus’s apartment.
Inside a locked drawer, he discovered a video confession.
Marcus described every contract he had signed.
He named the officials Arthur bribed.
He admitted helping frame me for theft.
He also revealed that Arthur ordered Harlan to sabotage Eleanor’s car.
The recording could support the criminal case.
Arthur’s defense would still call it the statement of a guilty man seeking mercy.
Marcus needed to survive and testify.
Harlan escaped the rooftop through a maintenance tunnel.
A traffic camera captured him entering a Vale security vehicle.
The vehicle traveled toward the company’s oldest shipyard.
Ruiz ordered me to remain at the hospital.
I followed him anyway.
Rain covered the shipyard.
Abandoned cranes rose above the docks like broken skeletons.
We found Harlan inside a dry dock beneath an unfinished cargo vessel.
He had wired fuel tanks throughout the structure.
Arthur’s private yacht waited beyond the dock gates.
Harlan opened fire from the upper platform.
Agents took cover.
I climbed a maintenance ladder behind him.
He heard me before I reached the platform.
His rifle turned toward my face.
I struck the barrel aside.
The shot tore through a cable above us.
A suspended steel beam fell between the agents and the stairs.
Harlan attacked with a knife.
He was stronger.
I was faster.
I trapped his wrist against the railing.
He drove his elbow into my scars.
Pain weakened my grip.
“You always save everyone except yourself,” he said.
He pushed me toward the edge.
Below us, seawater filled the dry dock.
I remembered the burning hatch.
I remembered refusing to let go.
This time, I released him.
Harlan fell forward.
I caught his wrist before he dropped.
His body hung above the water.
“Why?” he gasped.
“Because I am not Arthur.”
Ruiz reached us and pulled Harlan onto the platform.
Agents arrested him.
Harlan laughed while they restrained him.
“You think Arthur ordered everything.”
“He did.”
“No.”
“The Harbor Crown shipment was not his plan.”
“Whose was it?”
Harlan looked toward the yacht.
“Ask Vivienne.”
An explosion tore through the dock.
The lights vanished.
In the confusion, a speedboat emerged from beneath the yacht.
Arthur stood behind the controls.
Vivienne sat beside him.
May you like
She was not restrained.
She was holding the detonator.
