Chapter 59 - The Sovereign Vault of Arthur Holloway
The scuttling pumps groaned as water surged into the lower compartments, but the emergency bulkheads were already slamming down under the automated federal override Miller had triggered from the main deck. The ship wasn't going to sink; it was grounded firmly on the harbor mud.
Claire lay sprawled against the steel netting, clutching her broken face, blood pouring between her manicured fingers and ruining the black wool of her designer sweater. She looked small. Pathetic. Stripped of the Holloway name, stripped of her father’s power and her mother’s social shield, she was nothing more than a failed murderer cornered in the belly of a rusted cargo ship.
Federal tactical officers poured down the ladderways, their weapons light-painting the smoke-filled compartment. Two agents wrenched Claire’s hands behind her back, the ratcheting click of the heavy steel cuffs echoing against the bulkheads.
"Get off me!" she screamed, her voice muffled by blood and tears. "Do you know who my father is? Do you know who I am?"
Miller walked up through the dissipating halon fog, her face smeared with soot, holding her badge forward. "Your father is currently under federal arrest in the ship's sickbay, Claire. He suffered a major cerebral hemorrhage twenty minutes ago. His doctors say he won't ever speak again. Which means everything you did... you did for an empire that died this morning."
Claire stopped screaming. She looked across the flooded deck at the papers floating in the black water—the lists of bribes, the offshore accounts, the real estate deeds that Eleanor had hoarded like a dragon in her suburban mansion. The paper was already dissolving in the brine and oil.
She turned her eyes to me, looking for some trace of pity, some lingering fragment of the sister who used to let her win at every parlor game just to keep the peace at dinner.
May you like
She found nothing. My face was as cold as the iron plates beneath our feet.
"Take her away," Miller said quietly.
