Chapter 66 - The Three-Minute Countdown Above the Abyss
The red digital display on the primary C4 detonator pulsed like an open artery against the frost-caked steel of the suspension bridge: *02:47... 02:46...*
The howling Alpine wind ripped across the gorge, screaming with the force of a freight train through the metal lattice. Below us, a sheer drop of one thousand feet vanished into the pitch-black void of the Usses River canyon. A single misstep on the black ice coating the bridge deck meant instant oblivion.
"She isn't here to save him," Khloe whispered, her voice trembling with a terrifying blend of fury and horror. She tightened her grip on Grace, sheltering our newborn against her chest beneath the heavy woolen parka. "Mark... Catherine is going to blow the bridge with Anthony on it."
Twenty yards ahead of us, Anthony Vance was hobbling forward on his aluminum cane, his heavy designer coat fluttering in the blizzard. His face, still covered in post-surgical gauze from the fire in Zurich, was etched with desperate hope. He genuinely believed that Catherine Vance—the matriarch who had engineered his life, his marriage, and his madness—had brought the child here to save him with a bone marrow harvest.
"Mother!" Anthony's voice cracked against the gale. He paused ten feet from Catherine's sable-clad figure. "Where is the transplant team? You said the surgical transport was waiting on the French side!"
Catherine Vance didn't flinch. She stood beside the open door of the bulletproof Maybach, her gloved hand resting lightly on the roof. Her silver hair was perfectly pinned, untouched by the tempest, her cold gray eyes watching her son with the clinical detachment of a scientist observing an insect trapped in paraffin.
"You've become an embarrassment, Anthony," Catherine said. Her voice wasn't loud, but through the directional microphone in my tactical headset, every syllable sliced like a straight razor. "A Vance does not leave a paper trail across three European cantons. A Vance does not allow a common surrogate and her pathetic husband to dismantle a dynasty."
Anthony froze. The cane slipped an inch on the ice. "What are you talking about? Mother... the baby. My son is in the incubator!"
"That child is not your son," Catherine replied calmly, pulling an ivory-handled Sig Sauer from the pocket of her sable coat. "That child is the sole registered heir to the Vance Trust. Under the amended Swiss charter I signed an hour ago in Zurich, if you die without biological issue recognized by the state, the entire eight-hundred-million-dollar estate reverts to me. And if the child dies tragically in a terrorist incident alongside you... the insurance indemnity alone is worth three hundred million."
*02:11... 02:10...*
"You monster," Anthony choked out, his voice hollow with the crushing realization of a lifetime of manipulation. "You orchestrated the fire. You told the police I was the one who stole the embryos—"
"You were always weak, Anthony," she sneered, raising the pistol directly at his forehead. "Like your father."
"Mark!" Khloe hissed beside me, her eyes burning. "The incubator! Look inside the Maybach—the guard is pulling the emergency life support plug!"
Through the tinted glass of the luxury sedan, a masked operative was reaching into the glowing blue incubator, severing the umbilical oxygen line.
May you like
I didn't think. I raised the Remington 870 shotgun, lined up the crosshairs on the rear tire of the Maybach, and squeezed the trigger.
***
