He Came Home Early and Found a Pet Collar Around His 6-Year-Old Son’s Neck. His New Wife Called It “Discipline”—Until Her Own Mother’s Phone Revealed What They Had Planned Before the Party Even Began. / Chapter 77 / 80

Chapter 77 - The Judas Maternal

Before the Syndicate helicopter could reposition its searchlight, the storm clouds above the cliff detonated with orange fire.

A pair of unguided Hydra rockets screamed out of the squall, slamming into the granite ridge directly above the heavy machine gun nest. Millions of tons of rock and burning debris collapsed downward, burying the gunners and their .50 caliber weapon beneath an avalanche of stone.

Julian’s battered Sea King helicopter roared out of the mist like a vengeful iron beast, door guns blazing as 7.62mm tracer rounds tore into the side panels of the Syndicate’s AW101.

"Go! Go!" Daniel screamed, lunging out of the sea cave’s narrow mouth onto the jagged rocks of the shoreline, clutching Mason tightly against his chest.

The freezing spray of the Atlantic hit them like needles of ice. Giant breakers crashed against the basalt boulders, threatening to sweep them both into the bottomless black ocean. Above them, the two helicopters circled like hawks in a tempest, trading devastating bursts of gunfire.

"Daniel!"

The scream didn't come from the sky.

Daniel spun around on the slippery kelp. Standing on a natural stone causeway twenty yards away, framed by the raging surf and the burning ruins of the fortress above, was Emily.

She had discarded her surgical coat. She wore tactical black fatigues, her hair plastered to her skull by the rain. In her hands, she held an MPX submachine gun, aimed straight at Daniel’s head.

Behind her, emerging from an armored sea bunker built into the cliff face, was an enclosed tracked gantry carrying a sealed, pressurized medical pod. Inside the glass capsule, bathed in eerie ultraviolet light, lay Arthur Vance. The old man was hooked to emergency life-support ventilators, his eyes wide and feverish, watching the drama unfold like an emperor in an arena.

"Drop him, Daniel!" Emily shouted, stepping closer, the spray drenching her pale face. "You cannot escape this island! That extraction bird will be in the sea within two minutes!"

As if to validate her words, an anti-aircraft missile fired from a concealed launcher on the fortress battlements spiraled into the sky, clipping the tail rotor of Julian’s Sea King. The transport spun violently out of control, trailing thick black smoke as it banked away toward the open sea, fighting to stay airborne.

Daniel was alone. No cavalry. No air support. Just him, a broken child, and the woman who had engineered their damnation.

Daniel set Mason down behind a jagged spine of black basalt. He drew his .45, his last magazine already locked inside, the slide racked back.

"You really think you're going to take him, Emily?" Daniel yelled over the roar of the surf. "You'll have to put a bullet through my brain first."

"Don't flatter yourself, Daniel," Emily said, her finger tightening on the MPX trigger. "I was always prepared to do that. I never loved you. You were simply the carrier with the correct HLA-antigen compatibility to father Arthur’s host. You were an incubator for a better man!"

"Mommy, stop!"

Mason’s voice cracked across the storm.

The boy stepped out from behind the rock. He stood tall, his little shoulders squared against the howling wind, the foil blanket whipping around him like a warrior’s cloak. In his hand, he wasn't holding a weapon.

He was holding the silver Sovereign signet ring Daniel had recovered from Vanessa’s vault—the ancient seal of the Vance family line.

"You want this?" Mason yelled at his mother, holding the heavy iron ring over the edge of the churning, fifty-foot ocean abyss. "Grandfather said this is the key to the vault! He said whoever holds this owns the bloodline!"

Arthur’s eyes widened inside the glass pod, his skeletal hands slamming desperately against the viewport, his muffled screams swallowed by the storm.

Emily’s eyes flicked to the ring, a microsecond of genuine panic cracking her cold composure. "Mason, don't! That cipher contains the cryptographic keys to sixty billion dollars in overseas trusts! Don't you dare drop that!"

"I’m not Mason Vance," the boy shouted, his voice ringing with pure, unyielding defiance. "My name is Mason Walker! My daddy’s name!"