Chapter 76 - The Shattered Citadel
With a deafening groan of concrete under immense hydraulic pressure, the upper ceiling of the turbine chamber gave way. Light poured down from above as Mateo dropped a heavy-duty winch cable into the opening. Vincent clipped Emma onto the harness first, signaling upward with two sharp tugs.
"Take her up! Now!" Vincent yelled over the thunder of collapsing masonry.
Emma was hauled into the rain-swept night, gasping for air as Mateo and two operatives pulled her onto the solid concrete apron of the pier. Seconds later, Vincent hauled himself over the ledge just as the entire lower chamber collapsed inward behind them, swallowed by a massive geyser of foaming lake water.
The freighter in the distance was dead in the water. United States Coast Guard cutters and federal tactical gunboats were now swarming its perimeter, their blue and red strobes painting the churning waves in brilliant crimson and sapphire. The syndicate's flagship had been completely isolated.
Emma lay on the wet ground, trembling violently from hypothermia, but she was alive. Vincent dropped down beside her, stripping off his heavy tactical jacket and wrapping it tightly around her shivering shoulders. His dark hair was plastered to his forehead, his face streaked with soot and water, but his eyes held an intensity that made her breath catch.
"You did it," he whispered, his hand gently cupping the side of her freezing neck. "You saved this city, Emma."
"We did," she whispered back, managing a faint, exhausted smile.
Across the dock, Evelyn Sterling was being hauled to her feet in heavy titanium flex-cuffs by federal marshals. Her designer gown was shredded, her empire shattered into dust. As they dragged her past, she glared at Emma with venomous hatred.
"You think you’ve won?" Evelyn hissed, her voice cracked and hysterical. "You think this ends with me? The Sterlings were only the outer shell! The Board of Regents—the real architects—they won't let you live to see the dawn!"
"The Board of Regents has already been dissolved, Evelyn," Clara Vance said, walking slowly forward. Clara held up a sleek, modern smartphone—the screen displaying the live emergency broadcast of the Department of Justice. "Your offshore holdings were seized twenty minutes ago under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. And as for Victoria..."
Evelyn froze. "What did you do to my daughter?"
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"She was arrested forty minutes ago at O'Hare trying to board a private jet to Dubai with four million dollars in bearer bonds," Clara said dispassionately. "She will spend the next twenty-five years in a federal penitentiary in Pekin, Illinois. She will have plenty of time to contemplate the proper way to treat people who serve her meals."
Evelyn let out a despairing shriek as the marshals forced her into the back of an armored transport van and slammed the heavy doors shut.
