Chapter 112 - Fall into the Abyss

The engine devoured the canister with a violent, screeching mechanical crunch.

Fire blossomed instantly inside the turbine housing. A deafening percussion wave threw Eleanor backward against the transport's open cargo hatch, knocking the pistol from her grip. The heavy aircraft shuddered violently, its tail rotor swinging wildly across the edge of the helipad, slicing through the iron safety railings in a blinding cascade of sparks.

"Move!" Vance bellowed, surging to his feet and slamming a shoulder into the second operative before the man could recover his weapon.

Liam lunged toward me, grabbing my coat collar and yanking me hard just as Arthur scrambled toward Eleanor's outstretched arm. "Maya, jump!" Liam screamed over the apocalyptic roar of the failing helicopter. "The catwalk! Now!"

Behind us, Eleanor was hauled into the burning fuselage by two black-clad crewmen. Through the smoke and flickering orange flames, her eyes locked onto mine one last time—not in terror, but with a frigid, venomous rage.

"Arthur! Get in!" she screamed, her hand catching Arthur's collar as the transport began to yaw violently over the cliff edge.

The helicopter’s landing gear clipped the concrete parapet, showering us in shards of pulverized stone. Liam shoved me over the side of the helipad just as the secondary fuel line detonated in a thunderous ball of blinding fire.

We fell through twenty feet of howling darkness, hitting the lower maintenance catwalk with a bone-jarring impact. The rusted iron groaned beneath our weight, swaying precariously over the churning black abyss of the Atlantic five hundred feet below.

Above us, the damaged transport fought for altitude, spewing thick black smoke into the torrential rain as it banked sharply toward the eastern horizon, disappearing into the storm clouds toward international waters.

I lay on my back, gasping for air, the metallic taste of blood filling my mouth. The rain pelted my face like needles.

Liam crawled over to me, his hands trembling as he checked my pulse, his tactical vest scorched and torn. "Maya? Maya, look at me! Are you hit?"

"I'm... I'm alive," I wheezed, sitting up slowly as every muscle in my torso screamed in agony.

Vance slid down the maintenance ladder a second later, his face smeared with soot, holding an encrypted tactical drive he had torn from the downed operative's tactical vest.

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’re heading for the outer banks," Vance said, his breathing ragged, his hand pressed against a bleeding gash along his ribs. "The transponder frequency on this radio indicates Eleanor isn't going to Zurich. She’s retreating to the family compound in Newport."

I gripped the cold iron railing, staring out into the storm where my mother and my traitorous ex-husband had vanished. "She thought she killed my father to take the Thorne empire. She used my sister as bait to break me." I stood up, the pain in my body burning away beneath an incandescent wave of pure fury. "We're not running anymore, Vance. We're going to burn her kingdom to the ground."