Chapter 74

​POV: Isabella

​The mailbox sat on the corner of the quiet Brooklyn street like a blunt, blue anchor. I watched it through the cafe window, my fingers tracing the rim of the paper coffee cup. Across from me, Liam—or "Lee," as the air between us was trying to learn—wasn't looking at the box. He was looking at his hands, the gauze over his palms looking stark against the cheap Formica table.

​"He wouldn't have come here if it wasn't urgent," I said, my voice barely a whisper. "Marcus doesn't do house calls for social reasons."

​"Marcus doesn't exist anymore," Liam replied, his eyes finally shifting to the street. "If he’s still moving, it means the board didn't just collapse. It means the secondary players are scavenging the remains. He’s not working for the Sterling name. He’s working for the contract."

​"And who holds the contract now?"

​Liam didn't answer. He stood up, his movement lacking the usual effortless grace of a man who owned the air he breathed. He looked stiff, pained, and human. He walked to the door, the bell giving a small, cheery chime that felt wildly out of place. I followed him, the cool morning air hitting my face and making the feverish hum in my chest feel like a distant memory.

​We reached the mailbox. Liam didn't reach for the handle. He looked at the ground, then at the surrounding brownstones. "Stay behind me."

​"I'm done staying behind people, Liam," I said, stepping up beside him. "The core is quiet. I can think. I can see."

​He didn't argue. He reached into the metal mouth of the box and pulled out the padded envelope. It was heavy, the weight of it suggesting more than just paper. We didn't open it there. We walked two blocks over to a small, overgrown park where a rusted swing set creaked in the breeze.

​Liam tore the envelope open.

​A set of keys fell out first—heavy, old-fashioned brass. Then, two passports. I picked one up, flipping it open. The photo was me—taken from the steps of the courthouse—but the name was different. Elena Rossi. "Rossi?" I asked, a dry laugh escaping me. "A bit cliché, isn't it?"

​"It’s a name that disappears," Liam said. He was looking at his own. Lucas Rossi. "Marcus was always fond of the classics. He thinks we need to be invisible, not unique."

​But it was the letter at the bottom of the envelope that made the blood drain from my face. It wasn't written on Sterling letterhead. it was a scrap of yellow legal pad, the handwriting hurried and jagged.

​She’s out. The judge who signed the bail was a Vane appointee from '08. She didn't go to the estate. She went to the archives. She knows about the Founder’s Share, Liam. She knows it’s not just a reset key. She’s hiring the old 'Collection' team from the London office. They don't report to the board. They report to the signature. And right now, she’s still the only signature that clears the bank.

​"She made bail?" I asked, the words feeling like stones in my mouth. "After the leak? After the DOJ seizure?"

​"The DOJ seized the domestic assets, Isabella," Liam said, his voice hardening into that familiar, clinical edge. "But the 'Collection' team is paid through the Isle of Man. It’s a ghost account. The Feds can't touch it without a treaty, and by the time they get one, we’ll be gone."

​"She’s coming for the certificate," I said, looking at Liam’s shoe where he had hidden the square of gold foil.

​"She’s coming for the money," Liam corrected. "She doesn't care about the crime. She cares about the fact that she’s currently a billionaire with no liquid cash. The Founder’s Share is her only way to buy her way out of the country before the indictments turn into a life sentence."

​I looked at the brass keys. "Where do these go?"

​"The address is on the back of the passports," Liam said, flipping his over. "A warehouse in Red Hook. Marcus must have staged it months ago. It’s a secondary bridge."

​"A bridge to what?"

​"To the man in Switzerland," Liam said. "If we don't get you to Zurich, the forty-eight-hour window Sarah mentioned becomes a wall. The shunt isn't just a piece of tech, Isabella. It’s part of your endocrine system now. If it stays offline too long without a medical purge, your body will start to shut down. It thinks the lack of data is a total organ failure."

​I felt a cold shiver that had nothing to do with the wind. "How long do we have?"

​"Thirty-six hours," Liam said, checking his watch—the one item of luxury he still possessed. "And Eleanor has the London team. They have satellite access. They’ll be looking for the Rossi passports the moment they’re scanned at an airport."

​"Then we don't use an airport," I said.

​I looked at the keys again. They weren't car keys. They were maritime. Small, numbered tabs were attached to the rings. Pier 12.

​"He’s giving us a boat," I whispered.

​"He’s giving us a chance," Liam said.

​We didn't wait. We walked toward the waterfront, the smell of salt and diesel getting stronger as the residential streets gave way to the industrial grit of Red Hook. My legs felt heavy, a dull ache beginning to bloom in my joints—the first sign that the autonomy was starting to fray at the edges.

​We found Pier 12. It was a secluded dock tucked behind a row of rusted shipping containers. A modest, white motorboat was bobbing in the water, its name—The Quiet Life—painted in simple black letters on the stern.

​"Very subtle, Marcus," Liam muttered, stepping onto the deck.

​He found the ignition, the engine turning over with a low, throaty growl. I stood on the pier, looking back at the skyline of Manhattan. The Sterling Tower was visible in the distance, a silver needle piercing the clouds. It looked beautiful from here. It looked like a dream I had finally woken up from.

​"Isabella?" Liam reached out his hand.

​I took it, stepping onto the boat. The movement made my head swim, a momentary lapse in balance that made me stumble into his chest. He caught me, his arms wrapping around me with a desperate, protective strength.

​"I've got you," he whispered. "We're almost there."

​"We're never going to be 'there,' Liam," I said, looking up at him. "She’s never going to stop. You know that. She’ll hunt us until the money is gone or she is."

​"Then let her hunt," Liam said, his eyes turning to the open water of the harbor. "She’s used to chasing assets. She’s not used to chasing people who have nothing left to lose."

​He moved to the controls, untying the lines and pushing us away from the dock. As the gap between the boat and the pier widened, I felt a strange sense of lightness. The world was shrinking. The board, the press, the lawyers—all of it was being left on the shore.

​But as we cleared the breakwater, heading south toward the coast where a larger vessel was waiting to take us across the Atlantic, I saw a flash of light from the roof of one of the shipping containers.

​It wasn't a drone. It was the lens of a long-range scope.

​"Liam!" I shouted, ducking behind the console.

​A sharp thwack echoed across the water, and a hole appeared in the windshield, the glass spiderwebbing in a perfect circle.

​"Get down!" Liam roared, throwing the throttle forward.

​The boat surged, the bow lifting as we raced into the harbor. A second shot hit the engine housing, a plume of white smoke erupting from the vent.

​"They're here," I gasped, clutching the laptop bag. "The London team. They didn't wait for the airport."

​"They're not trying to kill us," Liam said, his jaw set in a hard, grim line as he fought the wheel. "They're trying to disable the boat. They want the certificate intact."

​He looked at me, his eyes full of a frantic, calculated heat. "Isabella, the bag. Is the drive encrypted?"

​"Yes, but—"

​"Give it to me," he said.

​I handed him the drive. He didn't tuck it into his pocket. He tied it to a small, orange buoy he’d pulled from the seat locker.

​"What are you doing?"

​"A trade," he said.

​He slowed the boat, the engine coughing and sputtering as the smoke thickened. Behind us, a sleek, black interceptor boat was tearing through the water, closing the distance with terrifying speed. I could see the men on the deck—four of them, dressed in the dark, professional gear of the Vane 'Collection' unit.

​"If they get the drive, they leave us alone!" I shouted over the wind.

​"They don't get the drive," Liam said. He looked at the orange buoy, then at the water. "They get the distraction."

​He threw the buoy overboard, the orange plastic bobbing in the wake. The black interceptor slowed immediately, the men on the deck pointing at the package. They didn't know it was a decoy. They didn't know the real data was still in the laptop bag I was clutching.

​"Go!" Liam yelled, hitting the secondary fuel pump.

​The motorboat gave a final, desperate roar, lurching forward as we headed for the crowded lanes of the shipping channel. We wove between a massive tanker and a tugboat, the black interceptor lost behind the hull of a thousand-foot cargo ship.

​We were clear for the moment, but the engine was dying. The smoke was turning black.

​"We have to ditch it," Liam said, looking at a small, private marina on the Jersey shore. "We can't make it to the open sea in this."

​"And the London team?"

​"They'll realize the buoy is empty in five minutes," Liam said. "But five minutes is all we need to disappear into the streets."

​The cliffhanger wasn't the boat or the chase. It was the feeling in my chest.

​As we hit the dock of the marina, I felt a sharp, agonizing pull in my sternum. Not a vibration. A coldness.

​The shunt hadn't just gone offline. It was starting to draw power from my own nervous system.

​"Liam," I whispered, sliding to the deck.

​He was at my side in a second. "Isabella? What is it?"

​"The thirty-six hours," I said, my vision beginning to blur at the edges. "I think... I think the clock is faster than we thought."

​I looked at his watch. It wasn't thirty-six hours. The battery indicator on the laptop—the one synced to my biometrics—was flashing red.

​Time remaining: 4 hours.

​The London team was behind us, the mother was ahead of us, and my own body was about to turn into a tomb.

​"Run," I told him.

​"Never," he said.

​He picked me up, his boots hitting the dock with a sound like thunder. We weren't heading for a boat anymore. We were heading for a hospital. And Eleanor Vane owned the only one that could save me.