Chapter 291: ~ 290
Chapter 290
~Franklin~
Octavia looked like a completely broken, helpless mother begging for the life of her stolen child. Her voice trembled, her shoulders shook, and the tears reflecting the harsh bulb above looked entirely real.
To me, she looked like the most brilliant, lethal woman alive. She was executing her role to absolute, flawless perfection.
Maria stood ten feet away from her, a sleek plastic detonator clutched in her gloved hand, her face twisted into a smug, triumphant grin of pure psychological rot.
She genuinely believed she had the perfect trap. She believed she had outmaneuvered the entire family.
She had no idea she had walked directly into our trap.
A low, rhythmic static hummed in the tiny, specialized earpiece tucked deep into my right ear canal. "Sniper units one and two are through the sub-level drainage grates," Flynn’s voice whispered, his tone tight, hyper-focused, and completely stripped of his previous panic. "They’ve bypassed her cellular perimeter scanners. They’re moving into the shadows behind the eastern cargo crates now, Franklin."
I adjusted my grip on the rifle, my breath rising in a faint, imperceptible plume in the freezing air of the rafters. Let her gloat, I thought, my dark eyes locked onto the back of Maria’s head.
The absolute certainty Maria possessed in this moment was the exact variable we had calculated twenty-five minutes ago in the grand foyer of the estate.
Flashback
I suspected that Octavia was hiding something. But I could not help but wonder what. She went upstairs a while ago.
While thinking of going to check on her, she came back downstairs.
"Look," she had whispered. "She sent an ultimatum. She wants me to come to the old North Docks warehouse. Alone. She has a tracker set up within a mile, if she gets a notification, Franklin, or a single standard police cruiser, she kills her."
My vision had turned a violent, blinding crimson. I had reached for my keys, ready to tear the city apart with my bare hands, but a heavy, trembling hand had clamped onto my forearm.
It was Flynn.
"Franklin, wait....don’t," Flynn had gasped, his face slick with cold sweat from his broken arm. "You can’t just storm the gates. I know how she thinks. I’ve lived under her thumb my entire life. She’s a narcissist, Franklin. This isn’t just about taking the baby; she wants the psychological payout. She wants to watch Octavia beg on her knees. She wants to see a mother broken because she thinks she was broken by this family."
Flynn had leaned over the table. "She expects you to act like this, Franklin. She expects you to either panic and call a massive, flashing police escort, or try to slide in through the front gates yourself. If she picks up any of that, she will pull that trigger without a second thought. You have to give her exactly what she wants. You have to give her Octavia."
Octavia had looked up at me, her dark eyes locking onto mine with an unyielding, terrifying maternal strength. "I’ll play the bait," she had said instantly, without a single shred of hesitation. "I’ll go in first. I’ll buy the time. But Franklin... you have to be the shadow."
In less than three minutes, the three of us had planned a counter attack.
Flynn had bypassed the main security, using his intimate knowledge of Maria’s preferred offshore digital encryption to track the exact cell tower her transmitter was utilizing. "The old shipping warehouse at Warehouse 4," Flynn had muttered, his fingers flying across my encrypted laptop. "There’s an old river drainage system that runs directly beneath it. It was built in the seventies and abandoned. The port authority blocked it off, but the iron grates are rusted through. A specialized, unmarked tactical team can slide through those tunnels."
I had looked at Octavia, my hands framing her face, pressing a hard, fierce kiss against her forehead. "I will be right above you," I whispered against her skin."
Octavia had nodded, sliding the phone into her pocket, turning around, and executing the perfect lie about a text from Annie right to the faces of the security to maintain the absolute illusion of isolation just incase she has a mole amidst them.
She had walked out the back door, exactly as we had planned to give Maria’s lookouts the perfect narrative of a desperate, rogue mother acting behind her husband’s back.
End of flashback.
Down below, Maria was holding the black plastic detonator high, her voice echoing. "The Flemington bloodline needs to understand what it feels like to be completely erased," she whispered down to my kneeling wife.
She thought she was a god dictating the final Chapter of our lives. She had no idea she was just a target standing in the center of a grid.
A tiny, almost imperceptible red dot suddenly appeared on Maria’s black cashmere coat, right between her shoulder blades. A second later, another crimson laser sight painted the side of her neck, followed by a third locking dead-center onto her wrist holding the detonator.
The sniper units were in position. The net was entirely closed.
Through my earpiece, the final tactical confirmation came through from Flynn, his voice a steady, chilling whisper from the mobile command unit a quarter-mile down the river. "Perimeter is locked. Sniper units are green across the board. She’s all yours, cousin. Take her down."
Below us, Maria violently stiffened, her head snapping upward toward the darkness of the ceiling, her pale eyes widening in instant shock as she realized the silence of her trap had been shattered.
I stepped forward, moving directly into the light, looking down at her. My chest heaved with a cold, concentrated fury, my deep voice dropping into a dangerous, lethal rumble that boomed through the cavernous rafters:
"The problem with treating people like pawns, Aunt Maria, is that you forget we know exactly how to play the game."
Maria gasped, her gloved hand trembling as she instinctively tried to raise the detonator toward the car seat, but the red laser sights on her wrist and chest instantly flared into a bright, warning brilliance.
"Don’t even twitch," I roared, the sound of my voice vibrating the very foundations of the warehouse. "Drop the device, Maria. The game is officially over."