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 78 / 80

Chapter 78 - The Ghost Admiral

For three hours, we ran silent beneath the Atlantic thermal layer, heading eastward toward the jagged, uncharted coast of the Azores archipelago.

Julian managed to dress my bullet wound with sterile gauze from the emergency med-kit. The pain was sharp and throbbing, but seeing Leo resting peacefully, his small chest rising and falling in rhythmic slumber on the jump seat, acted as an anesthetic stronger than any morphine. His bruised knees were clean, his small face relaxed for the first time in two agonizing years.

"Clara," Beatrice said suddenly, her eyes fixed on the low-frequency radio receiver. "We have an incoming broadcast on an encrypted diplomatic channel. It's not the Vance Syndicate. It's an old military frequency from the British Admiralty."

"Julian, do you recognize it?" I asked.

Julian leaned forward, squinting at the encryption sequence on the terminal. His jaw clenched, and a look of profound astonishment washed over his rugged features. "It's the personal signature of Admiral Arthur Vance. My mother’s eldest brother... my uncle. He disappeared from public life ten years ago after the Sterling patriarch tried to frame him for treason."

"Your uncle?" I asked, my hand dropping to my pistol out of pure instinct.

"Arthur despised the Sterling cabal," Julian said earnestly. "He tried to blow the whistle on the offshore syndicate before my father and Brooke orchestrated his court-martial. If he's alive and broadcasting... he’s the only man in NATO who hates the people who hurt Leo more than we do."

Beatrice tapped the decrypted audio feed. A deep, gravelly voice, weathered by decades of command at sea, filled the cramped cockpit.

*"To the commander of the ghost vessel. We tracked the detonation at Dead Man’s Reef. Our long-range sonar confirms the destruction of the Vance Syndicate's black fleet. If Clara Sterling and the child are aboard that sub, change course to coordinates 38° North, 28° West. A sovereign sanctuary awaits you. The Sterling empire’s final stronghold on land is crumbling, Clara. Come ashore and finish what you started."*

I looked at Julian, whose eyes were filled with solemn certainty. Then I looked at Leo, sleeping peacefully under the woolen blanket.