I caught my husband kissing my older sister in my mother’s kitchen while twenty people celebrated my father’s sixty-fifth birthday in the next room. / Chapter 35 / 120

Chapter 35 - Operation Blackwater Spire

The abandoned oil rig rose out of the storm-tossed Atlantic like a colossal iron spider, its rusty derrick piercing the low, bruised storm clouds. Massive ocean swells smashed violently against its concrete pylons, throwing plumes of white foam fifty feet into the air.

Liam cut the boat’s engines two hundred yards off the southern pylon, letting the vessel drift under the cover of a massive rusted ballast tank. Rain was now falling in stinging torrents, masking the sound of our approach.

A low, black vessel—a customized military-grade stealth interceptor—slid silently alongside our zodiac. Four operators in sterile, unmarked black tactical gear tossed grappling lines, securing the two boats together.

"Liam," the leader of the squad murmured, lowering his balaclava. It was a woman in her late thirties, her eyes like chipped granite. "Perimeter is hot. They’ve got three marksmen on the lower catwalk and an automated radar turret scanning the northern access."

"We use the maintenance shaft beneath the flare boom," Liam instructed, his voice steady and commanding. "Dad, you and Margaret stay on the interceptor. If we aren't back in forty minutes, Sarah takes you straight to the naval station in Newport."

"Maya," Dad reached out, his hand clutching my arm tightly. His eyes were wild with fear. "Don't do this. Give them the drive. Just throw it into the sea and come back."

"If we throw it into the sea, Dad, they kill Eleanor and hunt us down wherever we hide," I said, checking the tactical harness Liam had strapped across my chest. "This ends tonight. On this platform."

Liam handed me a compact sidearm, showing me the safety catch. "Keep behind me. If anyone wearing armor steps into your sightline, don't hesitate. Pull the trigger."

I gripped the cold steel, the adrenaline surging so fiercely in my veins that my vision sharpened to razor precision. The woman who had wept on her kitchen floor after discovering her husband’s betrayal was dead. In her place stood a woman fighting for the survival of her family.

Using pneumatic magnetic ascension lines, Liam and the three operatives shot grappling hooks into the rusty underside of the maintenance gantry. Within seconds, we were pulled upward through the howling wind, suspended over the raging ocean abyss.

We vaulted over the safety railing onto the slick iron deck of the lower staging area.

*Crack!*

A suppressed rifle round ricocheted off the steel pillar inches from Liam’s helmet.

"Contact! Catwalk three!" Sarah hissed.

Liam dropped to one knee, firing two rapid shots into the shadows above. A silhouette tumbled from the upper platform, plummeting three hundred feet down into the boiling ocean waves below.

"Move! Clear the gantry!" Liam shouted over the wind.

Gunfire erupted across the open steel framework. The Sovereign Trust’s private security force converged on the southern sector, their muzzle flashes illuminating the rain-drenched darkness like strobes. Liam and Sarah pushed forward with ruthless efficiency, clearing corners, neutralising threats before the guards could set up defensive choke points.

I pressed my back against the rusted bulkhead, heart pounding against my ribs, advancing step by step behind Liam as we climbed higher into the heart of the iron labyrinth.

Through the shrieking tempest, an industrial loudspeaker crackled across the rig: