Chapter 32 - The Bloodline Ledger
The explosion outside shook the foundation of the boathouse, sending plumes of water fifty feet into the rainy air as Frank detonated the perimeter defensive charges along the outer jetty. The shockwave flipped the lead interceptor boat, sending its crew tumbling into the freezing, churned-up waters of the lake.
"Into the hydrofoil! Now!" Frank commanded, guiding me down the metal ladder into the pressurized cabin.
David held the hatch open, taking Leo from my arms with extreme care before helping me down the wet steps. Inside, the cabin hummed with auxiliary power. Screens flickered to life, showing thermal imaging of the cliffside and the remaining two boats circling back toward the shore.
"Where does this lead?" David asked, his voice cracked with exhaustion. "The lake is surrounded. Vance has customs, the cantonal police, and the private airfield locked down."
"Vance owns the surface," Frank replied, his fingers flying across the navigation console. "He doesn't own the bypass channel. The Swiss military dug an auxiliary water conduit beneath the St. Bernard spur during the Cold War. It empties directly into an underground facility in Montreux."
He engaged the hydrofoil’s electric turbines. The vessel surged forward, not into the open waters of the lake, but down through an opening beneath the boathouse waterline, slipping beneath a hydraulic gate that closed behind us like an iron tomb.
The roar of the surface gunfire vanished instantly, replaced by the steady, muffled hum of high-pressure electric motors echoing through a subterranean stone tunnel.
I sat back on the cushioned bench, wrapping Leo in a dry thermal fleece from the ship's emergency locker. My hands finally stopped trembling. I looked across at David, who was staring down at his phone. The device had picked up the internal relay satellite before we dove completely subterranean.
A notification pinged. It was an email addressed to David, sent forty minutes ago from an anonymous encrypted account.
"Mom," David whispered, handing the screen to me with numb fingers. "Look."
I took the screen. It was an attachment: a signed, notarized contract bearing Chloe’s distinctive, flamboyant signature, executed through a shell company registered in the Cayman Islands.
The terms were spelled out in cold, predatory legal prose. In exchange for the biometric identity records and sovereign trust rights of Leo Vance-Miller, Chloe had been granted an immediate twenty-five-million-dollar unsecured line of credit, a luxury penthouse in Sunny Isles, Florida, and an indemnification clause protecting her from any legal claims brought by Evelyn Miller.
The date on the contract was three weeks before she had thrown her tantrum over my Tupperware and demanded I move out of my own house.
"She planned it from the very beginning," David said, burying his face in his hands, weeping openly. "Before she even showed me the positive pregnancy test. She sought me out. She didn't love me, Mom. She never loved me. She was hunting your family’s trust fund."
May you like
"Listen to me, David," I said, my voice steady, sharp, and cut with iron. "You made foolish, selfish choices. You let vanity and weakness blind you to who that girl was. But you are Leo's father, and you are my son. You are done crying. You are done being her stepping stone. From this moment on, you help me dismantle everything Arthur Vance and Chloe think they've won."
David looked up, wiping his eyes on his wet sleeve. For the first time in his life, the indecisiveness in his jaw dissolved. "Tell me what to do."
