Chapter 13 - Echoes from the Cell
We hiked desperately through the freezing, pitch-black wilderness for six agonizing hours until we finally reached a small, forgotten rural train station.
We paid entirely in crumpled cash to board a rusted, completely empty freight train headed directly toward the chaotic heart of the city.
Ethan sat heavily on the cold metal floor of the train car, furiously dismantling his encrypted burner phone to prevent any digital tracking.
He looked at me with deep, soul-crushing guilt, repeatedly apologizing for dragging me back into his family's blood-soaked nightmare.
I grabbed his shaking face aggressively with both hands and firmly told him that we were a team, and we were going to utterly destroy whoever was coming after our daughter.
Ethan explained that Victoria was currently rotting in a maximum-security federal prison, and Julian was confirmed completely dead in that underground clinic.
The only person left with the immense power, endless wealth, and striking blue eyes of the Vance bloodline was someone who had been officially declared dead over twenty years ago.
It was Ethan’s ruthless father, Alistair Vance.
Ethan’s voice dropped to a terrified, haunted whisper as he explained that his father was an absolute monster who made Victoria look like a harmless saint.
Alistair had supposedly died in a fiery, explosive plane crash when Ethan was just a child to escape international war crime tribunals.
If Alistair was truly alive, he possessed a global network of highly corrupt politicians, lethal assassins, and endless resources.
The nurse at the clinic was likely one of his elite, highly brainwashed operatives.
Just as the rusted train lurched violently into the underground city station, Ethan’s secondary emergency pager suddenly beeped loudly in the darkness.
It was a massive, highly restricted frequency that only one person in the entire world knew how to access.
The short, heavily coded text message was terrifyingly simple.
It was from Victoria’s maximum-security prison cell.
May you like
The chilling message simply read that the true devil had finally returned from the grave, and Lily’s extremely rare blood type was the only key to unlocking a fifty-billion-dollar shadow trust.
If we wanted our daughter to survive the week, we had to visit the wicked matriarch in her heavily guarded cage immediately.
