Chapter 16 - The Waters of Monaco
The roar of the twin-engine helicopter echoed across the jagged cliffs of the French Riviera as Julian Vance and I descended toward Port Hercule. Below us, the Mediterranean was an expanse of hammered ink under the twilight sky, dotted with the glowing super-yachts of the world’s elite. But we were not here for champagne or the casino tables of Monte Carlo. We were here for blood and legacy.
"Take a breath, Grace," Julian’s deep, steady voice broke through my spiraling thoughts.
His gloved hand covered mine where it rested on my knee. His touch was an anchor against the tempest raging inside me. Just hours ago in Zurich, we had crushed Ethan’s attempted liquidation of Carter Global. My treacherous ex-husband was currently in the custody of Swiss federal authorities, stripped of his stolen authority, shivering in a holding cell. Yet victory had tasted like ash the second Eleanor and Olivia’s faces appeared on the screen.
They had my father’s journal. The brass-bound ledger was more than a family keepsake; it held the cryptographic coordinates to the deep-sea mineral blocks my father had secretly surveyed before his sudden, suspicious decline. If Eleanor and Olivia registered those maritime claims through the offshore shell companies waiting in Madagascar, Carter Global would be rendered a hollow shell, and my father’s true life’s work would belong to the woman who stole my marriage and the matriarch who enabled her.
"I won't let them desecrate his name," I said, my voice hardening. The scar hidden beneath my hairline—where Olivia had shattered that marble vase while Ethan held me down—throbbed with phantom heat. That night, I had been bleeding on the parquet floor, listening to my husband whisper sweet reassurances to his mistress while treating me like roadkill.
That broken girl was dead. The woman sitting beside Julian Vance was an executioner.
"You won't have to," Julian murmured, his dark eyes flashing with unyielding resolve. "Because by dawn, Olivia and Eleanor will realize that taking what belongs to you carries a price they cannot afford."
The helicopter touched down on the private helipad of Julian’s vessel, the *Vanguard*—a two-hundred-foot, matte-black stealth yacht engineered for tactical interception rather than leisurely cruising. Marcus was waiting at the boarding ramp, his expression grim.
"Boss. Miss Grace," Marcus acknowledged, handing Julian a secure tablet. "Eleanor’s yacht, *The Siren’s Call*, left the marina forty minutes ago heading south-southeast toward international waters. They’re running without transponders, but our satellite uplink locked onto their thermal signature. They’ve hired private maritime contractors—disgraced ex-navy mercenaries."
Julian glanced at the tactical display, then looked down at me. "They’re running for the open sea to broadcast the coordinates via encrypted satellite before we can intervene. If they cross the twelve-mile boundary, legal jurisdiction becomes complicated."
"Then don't let it become legal," I said coldly, looking into Julian's eyes. "Let's make it personal."
A slow, devastating smile curved Julian’s lips. "Cut the moorings, Marcus. Full throttle."
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The engines of the *Vanguard* roared to life, churning the black waters into white froth as we tore into the Mediterranean, chasing the ghosts that had tried to bury me alive.
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