Chapter 16 - The Mother’s Reckoning
"You cannot go alone, Mom," Thomas said fiercely, his hand clamped on Margaret's shoulder. "It’s an ambush. Once they decrypt the files using Noah’s biometrics, they will eliminate all of you. You, Ethan, and the boy."
"I am not letting them hurt my grandson," Margaret said, her voice eerily calm. The grandmother who baked cookies and tended blue hydrangeas was gone. In her place stood a woman forged in iron, a woman whose bloodline had been targeted by corporate butchers.
"Listen to me," Ethan pleaded, his eyes red and wild. "I failed him once, Mom! Three years ago, I sat in that living room paralyzed by grief while Vanessa tortured him with neglect! I let him scream! I won't let you sacrifice yourself to fix my failures!"
"This isn't about your failures, Ethan," Margaret snapped, turning to face her son. "This started before you ever met Vanessa. Vance-Sterling murdered my daughter Olivia. They sent Vanessa into your life specifically to monitor you, to find where Olivia hid the proof of their poisoned drugs! You were targeted because you were vulnerable!"
Ethan froze, the horrifying puzzle finally snapping together in his mind. Vanessa’s sudden entrance into his life three months after Olivia’s funeral... the way she effortlessly seduced him, moved into his house, insisted on redecorating, controlling every aspect of his existence...
She was never a romantic partner. She was an operative planted to recover the damning evidence before it could reach the FDA.
"Thomas," Margaret ordered, turning to her youngest son. "You have your tactical gear in the trunk?"
"Yes," Thomas replied without hesitation.
"Ethan, you have your father's hunting rifle in the lockbox?"
Ethan nodded slowly, a dark, lethal resolve hardening in his jaw.
"They asked for me alone," Margaret said coldly, pulling her leather gloves on tightly. "So I will walk through the front door. But you two will enter through the industrial cooling vents from the river side. We are not negotiating with them. We are ending this."
Thomas immediately popped the trunk of his SUV, retrieving two compact tactical vests, a suppressed service pistol, and a thermal-imaging drone. "The chemical depot has five subterranean levels. If they're holding him, it’ll be in the central processing bay—thickest concrete, zero cell reception."
Margaret took the small, concealed panic tracker Thomas handed her and slipped it into the inner lining of her boot.
May you like
"One hour and fifteen minutes," Margaret checked her watch. "Let's bring our boy home."
***
