Chapter 43 - The Patriarch's Whisper
The silence that followed was heavier than a thousand fathoms of ocean.
I fell to my knees beside Clara’s empty bed, clutching her silver ribbon to my chest. "He’s going to turn her into a monster, Silas. He took her because he wants you on your knees. We can't give him the codes—if he controls the eastern seaboard, he controls every dock, every harbor, every weapon coming into this country."
"He won't get the codes," Silas said, his back turned to me.
"And you can't go alone!" I stood up, stepping directly into his personal space, my hands gripping the lapels of his body armor. "Look at me! When I was bleeding on the floor of that diner, you told me that blood calls to blood, but honor chooses its family. I am Clara’s mother. I didn't survive Thorne’s hitmen and the dock siege to sit in a bunker waiting for an old ghost to slaughter my family!"
Silas looked down at me. The icy fury in his eyes softened for a fraction of a second, revealing the fractured soul beneath. He reached out, his calloused thumb gently brushing a tear from my cheek.
"I have no intention of going alone, Elena," he murmured. "And I have no intention of obeying my father’s rules. He taught me how to fight. He taught me how to conquer. But he forgot one fundamental truth."
"What truth?"
"He taught me how to kill him."
Silas stepped over to the master tactical terminal and entered a secondary sequence of eighteen alphanumeric codes. A hidden vault recessed into the bedrock wall hissed open, sliding back to reveal crates of high-grade tactical hardware, naval diving rigs, and an encrypted satellite communications array.
"Arthur said the Deepwater Berth," Silas explained, bringing up a nautical satellite map on the main display. "He isn't on a dock. He’s on the *Leviathan*—a decommissioned Soviet-era Typhoon-class command dreadnought he purchased through the black market fifteen years ago. It’s anchored twelve nautical miles off Montauk Point, sitting in international waters right in the teeth of the nor'easter rolling in tonight."
"A floating fortress," I said, studying the schematics. "How do we even get close without him knowing?"
"We don't go by air. His radar grid will paint a chopper five miles out. And we don't go by boat—his sonar will pick up any surface craft." Silas pulled two black, pressurized tactical rebreathers from the crate. "We use the ghost sub. The one Thorne thought sank in the harbor raid."
"And Clara?" I asked, my voice steadying with iron resolve. "Where would he keep her on a ship that massive?"
"The bridge observation suite," Silas said, racking the bolt of an underwater assault carbine. "My father is a narcissist. He wants to watch the ocean burn from the highest tower. He will keep her right beside him to force me to watch her while he breaks me."
He handed me a customized sidearm and a tactical combat knife. "Are you ready for this, Elena? Once we breach that hull, there is no negotiation. There is only survival."
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"I was a waitress who cleaned up broken glass," I said, sliding the blade into the sheath on my thigh. "Now I’m going to clean up your family’s bloodline."
***
