Chapter 39 - The Matriarch's Fall
"Dominic! Get Emma and Leo out through the southern drainage tunnel now!" Vincent commanded, his voice cutting through the blaring sirens and the hissing of toxic gas.
"Vincent, no!" Emma cried, grabbing his tactical sleeve as Dominic arrived, scooping Leo up into his uninjured arm. "You have to come with us!"
"She has the master ledger," Vincent said, looking up toward the catwalk where Helena was fleeing toward the emergency rail gantry. "If Helena escapes with those funds, she will hire an army. She will hunt you and Leo to the ends of the earth. This ends tonight, Emma. Take the boy. Go!"
"Vincent, please!" Emma begged, her eyes filled with tears.
"Trust me," Vincent whispered, his hand pressing firmly against her cheek for a split second. "I will come back to you. Now go!"
Dominic pulled Emma backward into the tunnel entrance. "We have to move, Emma! The roof is coming down!"
Emma tore her eyes away, clenching her teeth, and ran with Dominic, ensuring Leo's safety as ceiling tiles and heavy steel pipes began to crash down behind them.
Vincent turned and sprinted toward the metal staircase leading to the catwalk. Thermite charges detonated along the support pillars, sending cascading showers of white-hot molten metal down into the foundry floor. The heat was instantaneous and blistering, melting the paint off the steel beams.
Vincent bounded up the stairs, clearing four at a time, until he reached the gantry platform overlooking the Calumet canal.
Helena was waiting at the emergency blast doors, the electronic tablet clutched in her hands, a small chrome derringer aimed directly at Vincent’s chest. The wind and rain from outside whipped violently through the open portal.
"You really are your father's son," Helena spat, her aristocratic composure completely shattered, her face twisted with bitter, venomous hatred. "Willing to die for common trash! That waitress’s family destroyed my empire thirty years ago, and you are throwing away the Moretti dynasty for her!"
"My father built an empire on honor," Vincent said, taking a slow, steady step toward her through the smoke, ignoring the pistol aimed at his heart. "You built an empire on graves, Helena. And graves always collapse."
"I gave you life, Vincent!" she screamed, her finger tightening on the trigger.
"And you took everything else," Vincent replied coldly.
Helena fired. The small caliber bullet slammed into the ceramic plate of Vincent’s tactical vest, knocking the wind from his lungs, but failing to penetrate. Vincent didn't flinch. He lunged forward, grabbing Helena’s wrist, twisting it until the gun dropped into the abyss below.
With his other hand, he snatched the biometric tablet from her grasp, crushing the hardened glass screen in his armored fist before hurling the shattered pieces into the fiery furnace below.
"NO!" Helena shrieked in agony, watching forty billion euros in stolen wealth vanish into the fire. "My legacy! My life’s work!"
The primary structural support beam above them groaned, fracturing under the intense heat of the thermite fire. A massive, five-ton steel girder began to fall directly toward the gantry.
Vincent lunged backward toward the exit gantry. Helena, blinded by madness and despair, lunged forward to grab the burning scraps of the tablet.
"Helena, jump!" Vincent roared instinctively, reaching out a hand.
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Helena looked at him, her eyes filled with boundless, irredeemable spite. "I would rather rot in hell than kneel to your mercy, Vincent."
The girder struck the gantry platform with catastrophic force, shearing the metal catwalk from its moorings. With a deafening screech of torn steel, the platform gave way, plunging Helena Moretti down into the fiery slag inferno of the collapsing foundry below.
