Chapter 35 - The Shadow of Monaco

Silas’s blade pinned Ward’s arm to the steel bulkhead before the colonel could draw his sidearm. With a brutal elbow strike, Silas shattered Ward’s nose, driving him down into the bilge water pooling on the engine room floor.

"Move, and I dissect your carotid," Silas snarled, his knee buried in Ward’s sternum.

Above us, the ship shuddered violently as Matteo brought *The Sovereign Queen* into an evasive hard bank. "Silas!" Matteo’s voice crackled over the intercom. "The destroyers are launching boarding helicopters! We have three minutes before the airspace is completely locked down!"

Silas grabbed Ward by the collar, dragging his battered face inches from his own. "Who is behind Thorne? Speak, or I throw you into the starboard propeller!"

Ward coughed up blood, laughing weakly through broken teeth. "You’re too late, Marcone... You think you're fighting a local mob? Julian Thorne sits on the High Directorate in Monaco. He owns the courts, the naval shipyards, the intelligence agencies. Clara’s biological mother... she was a Thorne bloodline carrier. The Consortium spent forty million developing the lineage to produce a compatible bone marrow and organ template for Lord Thorne's dying heir. She wasn't born to be a daughter, Silas. She was bred to be a spare parts bank!"

The monstrous truth hit the room like a toxic fog.

I fell to my knees, wrapping both arms around Clara, whose small body was trembling violently. They didn't want Clara because of love, or inheritance, or family pride. They wanted to harvest my baby to save some decrepit oligarch across the Atlantic.

"You sick bastards," I whispered through hot, furious tears.

Silas's eyes turned into black voids of pure, absolute wrath. The military discipline he had clung to for a decade evaporated, replaced by the apex savagery of a protector who had found the line he would never let anyone cross.

"Thank you for the intel, Gabriel," Silas said coldly.

With a swift, ruthless twist, Silas incapacitated the colonel, stripping him of his encrypted satellite communicator and keycard before turning to me.

"Elena, look at me," Silas demanded, his voice steadying my trembling soul.

I looked up, meeting his fierce gaze.

May you like

My fiancé let his friend chop off my mother’s waist-length

My husband spent the night with another woman

My husband brought his mistress to our nine-year-old daughter’s dance

"They will never touch her," Silas vowed, his voice cutting through the panic. "I am going to burn their empire to ash. But first, we disappear."

***