Chapter 37 - the abyss below
Eleanor hissed in fury, pinned against the navigation console by Roman’s iron grip. Gregory was weeping on the floor, knowing his life in federal prison was already written in stone. Outside the bridge windows, the sound of heavy rotor blades tore through the freezing fog—the extraction helicopter was circling above the rear deck, unaware that its employer was already neutralized.
"You think this is over?" Eleanor snarled, blood flecking her pale lips as she glared at Clara. "You think you won, Clara? You think freezing the accounts saves you?"
Clara looked at her coldly. "You're going to a maximum-security federal facility, Eleanor. And you will spend the rest of your life answering for my father's death, and Roman's father's murder."
Eleanor threw her head back and laughed—a sound so wild and filled with dark malice that it echoed off the glass.
"Look at the depth gauge, you foolish girl!" Eleanor laughed, her eyes wide. "I didn't set a timer on the scuttle charges. I linked them to the satellite uplink!"
At that exact second, a violent, deafening explosion ripped through the bottom of the freighter.
The entire four-hundred-foot vessel lurched violently to the left. The bridge deck tilted at a thirty-degree angle, throwing Gregory sliding across the metal floor into the instrument racks. The radar screens exploded in sparks, and the main engines died with a hideous, grinding shriek of torn steel.
Lake Michigan was rushing into the hull at thousands of gallons per second. The ship was breaking in half.
Roman grabbed Clara, hauling her toward the shattered bridge doorway as water began pouring up through the elevator shafts behind them. "The ship is sinking! We have to reach the aft helipad now!"
Eleanor scrambled across the tilting deck, clawing at a hidden lockbox welded beneath the captain's chair, pulling out a sealed waterproof canister. "You’ll never have the truth, Clara! You don't even know who your real father is!"
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Clara froze on the edge of the stairwell, her heart seizing in her chest. "What did you say?"
Through the deafening roar of rushing water and collapsing steel, Eleanor locked eyes with Clara, a horrifying, triumphant grin stretching across her face as the floor beneath their feet began to rip apart into the black abyss of the lake.
