My husband put his secretary in my seat on my own private jet, then looked me in the eye and told me to remember my place / Chapter 42 / 52

Chapter 42 - The Dawn Over the Mediterranean

"Henry, what is she talking about?!" My voice cracked through the tension.

Before Henry could answer, Christian’s comms crackled violently with static. "Claire! Jammer time expired! The safehouse reports the micro-capsule is out of Astrid's chest—she’s safe! Astrid is breathing on her own!"

A massive weight lifted from my lungs, but the relief lasted less than a second.

Eleanor didn't panic. Instead, she reached behind the wooden paneling behind her desk and pulled down a heavy, industrial breaker switch.

Instantly, the yacht's emergency sirens wailed to life, a deafening klaxon that tore through the harbor. Red emergency lights flooded the cabin. The digital screens around the salon flickered, displaying a dark, glowing seal: *PROJECT OLYMPUS — PROTOCOL ACTIVATED.*

"You saved your sister, Claire," Eleanor said, her voice carrying an eerie, triumphant calm over the howling sirens. "Congratulations. You proved you're a Vance. But the Genesis drive you scrambled on the public market didn't just dump my stocks. It triggered the master kill-switch for the United States North Atlantic defense grid."

Henry fell to his knees, clutching his head in pure agony. "She reversed the network logic... twelve years ago. Everything we thought was a financial shield was an offensive weapon."

"The yacht is scuttling in three minutes," Eleanor whispered, stepping onto the private elevator platform behind her as reinforced blast doors began to slide shut between us. "The French coast guard is being jammed. The harbor is going dark. And in twenty minutes, the entire world will think Claire Vance orchestrated the collapse of the Western financial and defense architecture from Monte Carlo."

She raised her fingers to her lips and blew me a mocking kiss as the armored titanium door slammed shut, locking her inside the private submarine escape bay beneath the hull.

"Christian, breach that door!" I shouted, the deck already beginning to tilt beneath our feet as water flooded the lower ballast tanks.

"No time, Claire!" Christian yelled over the blaring sirens, grabbing my arm. "The boat is taking on water fast! We have to evacuate now!"

I looked down at the briefcase containing the Genesis drive, then through the window at the harbor where the city lights of Monte Carlo suddenly began to flicker and extinguish one by one, plunging the Riviera into an unnatural, terrifying darkness.

Astrid was alive. Julian was destroyed. But the war had just expanded beyond anything I could have ever imagined—and my mother was slipping away beneath the black waves with the keys to the world.

"Claire!" Henry shouted, struggling to his feet amid the rising water. "We have one shot to counter the grid before the Pentagon retaliates!"