Chapter 58 - Crossing the Atlantic
There was no time to pack. There was no time to clean the mud from my boots or wash the smell of cordite and rain from my skin. Within forty minutes of the breach, Maeve, Tyler, and I were strapped into the rear bucket seats of an unmarked Gulfstream jet stationed at the regional military airfield, roaring into the storm-churned clouds above the Appalachians.
Maeve slept fitfully in Tyler’s arms, wrapped in a thick wool blanket from the aircraft’s locker. Her miniature safety goggles sat on the table beside us, a surreal reminder of the innocent evening we had been living just two hours prior.
Tyler’s knuckles were raw, swollen purple where he had struck the courier. He stared out the small oval window into the black void above the Atlantic, his expression tighter and more dangerous than I had ever seen it.
"He won't stop, Clara," Tyler said softly, making sure not to wake our daughter. "First it was the barbecue. Then the eviction notices. Then the hospital corridors when she was fighting for her life in that incubator. Then the trials. And now he’s chasing her across oceans."
"We're going to finish it," I said, reaching across the console to lace my fingers through his. "Denise thought she could control everything with legal traps and hidden bank accounts. But she never understood that a family isn't a trust fund. We're ending this lineage tonight."
Across the aisle, Vance worked furiously on an encrypted satellite laptop. The screen reflected a rapid stream of foreign court manifests, registry numbers, and high-resolution surveillance photos taken outside a private banking villa in Zurich.
"Thomas checked into the Hotel des Bergues three hours ago under an Austrian passport," Vance said without looking up from the keyboard. "He’s scheduled an emergency notary session at 9:00 AM with the President of the First Civil Chamber. He has a forged death certificate for Tyler and an affidavit claiming you abandoned Maeve at birth."
"He declared me dead?" Tyler’s voice dropped to an icy whisper.
"It’s an old trick used in high-net-worth succession disputes," Vance explained, tapping the screen. "Produce a corrupt foreign death certificate, claim the surviving child is a dependent ward, and petition for emergency conservatorship over the frozen trust accounts. If no one challenges the petition within twelve hours, the registry confirms the appointment automatically."
"What time does the registry open in Geneva?" I asked, looking at the cabin clock.
May you like
"In four hours," Vance said. "We touch down at Cointrin Airport in three. We will have less than sixty minutes to cross the city, breach the chancery, and put your signature on that court record before Thomas walks out of that vault with our daughter's legal custody."
I looked down at Maeve’s sleeping face, her soft breath brushing against Tyler’s chest. The memory of that sweltering afternoon—walking into the backyard barbecue twenty-seven weeks pregnant, surrounded by cold eyes and venomous whispers—flashed through my mind. They had underestimated me then. They were about to make the fatal mistake of underestimating me again.
