Chapter 8 - Cornered Beast
Victor backed away until his shoulders hit the reinforced glass window overlooking the marina docks below. His expensive tie was crooked; sweat poured down his neck, soaking through the collar of his designer shirt.
The polished, handsome, charming man I had married was gone. In his place stood a cornered, frantic rat whose walls had completely collapsed.
"You don't understand, Eleanor!" he screamed, his eyes darting frantically between the armed troopers and the exit. "You don't know who these people are! If I didn't give them the deep-water access, they were going to kill me! They came to my office six months ago! They showed me pictures of Sophie’s school! They showed me pictures of your morning commute!"
"You're lying," I said, cold disgust coating every word. "Julian Cross’s files showed you approached them first. You lost two million dollars in unauthorized offshore cryptocurrency speculation using company operating funds. When you couldn't cover the margin call, you went to Northlight to bail you out. You offered our family’s slips as collateral before they even knew who you were."
Victor’s jaw clenched. The pathetic, pleading expression vanished, replaced by an ugly, venomous sneer.
"And what was I supposed to do?" he hissed, stepping along the edge of the glass. "Spend twenty years breaking my back on your father’s rotten docks? Polishing hulls for old-money snobs who looked down their noses at me? I built the charter expansion! I brought in the high-end clients! But it was always *Hale* Marine. It was never mine! Everything belonged to you and your precious little girl!"
"Sophie is your daughter, Victor!" I yelled, my composure finally cracking, the primal fury of a mother surging to the surface. "She loved you! She had made you an anniversary cake with her own hands, and you watched her drown!"
"She was an anchor!" Victor spat, his face twisted in madness. "Both of you! Weighing me down, keeping me chained to this godforsaken harbor!"
Without warning, Victor lunged forward—not toward me, but toward the heavy bronze ship model resting on the credenza. He grabbed the ten-pound brass hull and hurled it violently through the lower pane of the floor-to-ceiling window.
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The safety glass shattered with an explosive crash. Before the troopers could cross the room, Victor threw himself through the jagged opening, landing hard on the steel grating of the exterior fire escape three feet below, and scrambled down toward the slips like a mad dog.
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