Chapter 15 - The Ultimate Sacrifice
The timer ticked down with brutal precision.
*00:25.*
*00:24.*
Wind howled through the shattered penthouse window, whipping Rose’s hair across her face. Below them, sirens screamed across Manhattan.
"Rose, get to the winch," Nathaniel commanded, never taking his eyes off Julian.
"No!" Rose seized Nathaniel’s arm. "I'm not leaving you!"
"Nathaniel, the cable can't hold three!" the pilot’s voice crackled through the comms. "We have to lift NOW or the updraft from the explosion will take the chopper down!"
"Go, Rose!" Nathaniel roared, his voice cracking with unbearable pain. "You saved my mother. You saved my soul. Now let me save you!"
"I promised I would never let you fall!" Rose screamed through the howling wind, tears streaming down her soot-streaked face. "We survive together, or we die together!"
Julian sneered, his finger hovering over the red switch. "How terribly melodramatic. Five seconds, children. Say goodbye to—"
Suddenly, a bloodied hand shot out from beneath the desk.
Victoria.
Casting aside all loyalty, driven by the pure, animalistic terror of dying in a ball of fire, Victoria lunged upward like a rabid animal, digging her long fingernails directly into Julian’s eyes.
"You lied to me!" Victoria shrieked hysterically. "You said we were escaping to Switzerland! You were going to blow me up with them!"
"Get off me, you crazy bitch!" Julian roared, swinging his silver cane into Victoria’s skull.
The struggle knocked the detonator from his grip. It skidded across the blood-slicked floor, teetering on the edge of the balcony parapet—sixty stories above the concrete street below.
*00:08.*
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*00:07.*
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