I came home after two years in Singapore and found my four-year-old son crawling on bruised knees while my husband’s mistress laughed and called him a little animal. / Chapter 76 / 80

Chapter 76 - The Mother’s Gambit

The next seven minutes were a blur of desperate, coordinated fury.

Julian, leaning heavily against my shoulder, dragged himself into the sub-deck while Beatrice overrode the core safeties of the *Valkyrie*’s nuclear-electric propulsion system. The ship’s main computer began a continuous automated distress broadcast: *ASSET CONTAINED ON COMMAND DECK. DEFENSES FAILING. ALL CONTRACTORS CONVERGE.*

In the tiny auxiliary bay beneath the keel sat the *Nautilus-II*, a classified two-man reconnaissance submersible that Julian had retrofitted for black-ops extractions. It was cramped, barely large enough for two adults and a child, but its hull was coated in radar-absorbent polymer designed to slip past active sonar.

"Get in, Leo," I whispered, lifting my boy into the cramped, padded cockpit.

He looked at the dark capsule, his eyes wide with fear. "Mommy, is it a box? Please don't put me in a box..."

Tears pricked my eyes as I remembered the small dog kennel Brooke had kept him in, the cold nights he had spent locked away while they dined on champagne and caviar. I knelt, framing his tear-streaked face with my hands.

"No, my darling. This isn't a box. This is our spaceship," I said softly, kissing both of his eyelids. "Mommy is coming inside with you. Julian and Grandma Beatrice are coming too. We are going under the water to leave the bad men behind forever."

Leo sniffled, reaching out to wrap his little fingers around my thumb. "You promise you won't leave me?"

"I will never leave you again as long as I draw breath," I swore. "Not for a single second."

He crawled inside, curling up obediently on the leather jump seat. Julian slid in beside him, gently wrapping an arm around the boy's shoulders to shield him. Beatrice sealed the auxiliary hatch above us with a dull, heavy clunk of locking bolts.

Through the periscope monitor, I watched the main radar feed of the *Valkyrie*.

The bait had worked with terrifying perfection. Greed had completely blinded the mercenary commanders. The *Cerberus* had pulled directly alongside the dying warship, dropping magnetic boarding gangways. Two other heavily armed gunboats had flanked the stern, while the three rogue submarines had surfaced to secure the perimeter, desperate to lay claim to the ten-billion-dollar prize.

"Reactor critical in sixty seconds," Beatrice whispered from the pilot's seat. "Release the mooring clamps."