My future husband thought marrying me would protect his billion-dollar empire and bury his financial crimes forever, until the chapel doors opened and a woman he claimed was dead walked inside. / Chapter 14 / 60

Chapter 14 - The River of Glass

Gunfire chewed into the thick steel door as we scrambled across the wet dirt floor. Clara knew the layout of the church with instinctual clarity, navigating the pitch-black labyrinth by touch alone.

We threw ourselves through an ancient iron service hatch, pulling ourselves upward into a narrow coal chute that smelled of fifty years of accumulated soot. Behind us, the tactical lights of Helena’s mercenaries swept through the crypt, their shouted commands echoing off the stone walls.

We emerged into an overgrown alley behind the rectory, tumbling into the freezing Montreal drizzle. My knees were scraped raw, my coat shredded, but Clara did not stop. She hauled me to my feet, and we ran through the alleyways, our breaths ragged and white against the autumn night.

Our rental car was already compromised—we could see an unmarked black SUV idling near its rear bumper two blocks away.

"We leave it," Clara breathed. "We take the river route."

Thirty minutes later, dodging secondary avenues and slipping through the shadows of the old industrial canal, we reached the St. Lawrence River marina. Clara had kept a secondary bug-out contingency: a twenty-eight-foot vintage mahogany runabout owned by a retired harbor pilot who had owed her father a debt of honor.

The vessel roared to life with a deep, throaty rumble. Clara slammed the throttle forward, and the boat leapt into the black, churning waters of the St. Lawrence, slicing through the river mist at thirty knots.

Behind us, the lights of Montreal receded into the fog, but the sky above was soon torn apart by the rhythmic, thumping drone of an approaching twin-turbine helicopter.

"They have radar lock!" I shouted over the engine's roar, staring back at the dark silhouette carving through the clouds. "They aren't going to let us clear the border!"

Clara’s hands were steady on the wooden wheel, her gaze fixed on the hazardous, boulder-strewn rapids of the Lachine channel ahead. "Jonathan always thought he could control the water with money. He never understood that the river doesn't take bribes."

A spotlight pinned our runabout in an blinding column of white brilliance. High-caliber rounds began churning the river into geysers of foam along our port side.

"Hold on!" Clara yelled.

She cut the wheel hard to starboard, throwing the runabout straight into the jagged, boiling white water of the shoals where no commercial vessel dared to tread. The helicopter swept low, attempting to pace our turn, but the sudden downdraft against the narrow gorge generated vicious turbulence, sending the aircraft wobbling violently against the canyon wall.

With a bone-shattering shudder, our hull scraped against an underwater granite shelf, launching us through a curtain of spray and into the dead-water channel behind an uninhabited island. The helicopter’s spotlight swept fruitlessly across the roaring main channel, unable to penetrate the dense mist of the rapids.

We drifted into the reeds, our engine smoking, safe for an hour in the freezing Canadian dark.

Clara slumped against the wheel, blood seeping from a shrapnel cut across her temple. She looked at me, her chest heaving, and reached inside her coat.

She had not grabbed the heavy ledgers. But in her trembling, dirt-streaked palm lay the encrypted solid-state hard drive she had torn directly from the server's chassis before killing the power.