Chapter 9 - The Final Chase
I frantically scanned the crowded ballroom from the control booth window, but the red dress was gone.
"Sienna escaped during the chaos," I yelled to Elias, who had just finished zip-tying the unconscious bodyguard.
"She cannot get far, the feds have surrounded the entire hotel perimeter," Elias assured me, catching his breath.
I looked at the laptop screen, noticing a new, unauthorized access protocol running in the background.
"Elias, she has the baby, and she is trying to access the offshore accounts from her phone," I panicked.
If she managed to transfer the funds to an untraceable crypto wallet, my foundation was dead forever.
Elias quickly traced the signal of her phone using the hotel's internal Wi-Fi network.
"She is on the roof," he said, grabbing the silenced pistol from under the server rack.
We sprinted out of the control room and charged up the emergency stairwell, our footsteps echoing loudly.
We burst through the heavy roof access door into the cold, biting night air.
The roaring sound of helicopter blades completely deafened us.
A sleek, black private helicopter was idling on the helipad, waiting for its VIP passenger.
Sienna was running toward the chopper, awkwardly holding the crying baby in one arm and typing furiously on her phone with the other.
"Stop right there, Sienna!" Elias yelled, aiming the pistol directly at the helicopter pilot to keep him grounded.
Sienna froze, turning around to face us with a desperate, wild look in her eyes.
The wind from the rotor blades whipped her expensive red gown around her legs.
"You took everything from me, Clara," she screamed over the noise, stepping dangerously close to the edge of the roof.
"You took it from yourself when you decided to be a monster," I yelled back, slowly stepping toward her.
I held my hands up peacefully, terrified that she might drop the innocent child in her panic.
"Just put the baby down, Sienna, and hand over the phone," I pleaded, trying to appeal to whatever humanity she had left.
Sienna looked down at the baby, then back at me, a twisted, bitter smile crossing her lips.
"If I cannot have this money, nobody will," she declared with absolute venom.
She raised her phone high into the air and hurled it violently off the side of the sixty-story building.
I watched in pure horror as the device plummeted into the darkness, taking the only access to my foundation's money with it.
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"It is gone, Clara," Sienna laughed hysterically, dropping to her knees in defeat.
As Elias rushed forward to secure her, a dark shadow stepped out from behind the helicopter's tail rotor.
