Chapter 3 - SHADOWS OF THE LIVING
The helicopter whipped through the swirling snow like a dying dragonfly, alarms shrieking deafeningly in my ears. I pulled Leo violently against my chest, hunching my upper body over him like a human shield. The centrifugal force pinned us against the metal floor.
“Hold on!” Cole roared, his hand catching the structural frame of the gurney as he threw his entire body over me and the baby.
I smelled the scorched iron of burning electronics and the cold musk of his tactical jacket. With heroic effort, the pilot wrestled the hydraulic stick, throttling the collective downward. The tail slammed into the deep snowdrifts of a blind mountain basin with a bone-jarring crash. Glass shattered, the cabin shook violently, and then... absolute silence fell, broken only by the hiss of cooling coolant and Leo’s terrified wailing.
“Everyone alive?” Cole demanded, instantly pushing himself up and checking Leo with gentle, scanning fingers. The baby was crying lustily, unharmed beneath our bodies.
“Pilot and co-pilot are green,” came the strained reply from the front. “Tail rotor took shrapnel from a portable heat-seeking launcher. They weren't trying to scare us; they were trying to vaporize us. If we were fifty feet higher, we’d be a fireball on the mountain.”
“Brandon didn’t just rely on the cliff,” I realized, cold dread curdling in my gut as Cole helped me sit up. My body screamed in protest from the recent birth, but adrenaline was a narcotic surge. “He had a backup team waiting in the park.”
“Not Brandon,” Cole said darkly, strapping a heavy sidearm to his thigh. “Brandon is a greedy coward, but he doesn't have military connections. Gretchen does. Gretchen’s brother, Marcus Vance, is an ex-contractor who runs private security for corporate acquisitions. He’s the one who handled your father’s ‘accidental’ car crash five years ago.”
The name struck me like a physical blow. Vance.
“Wait,” I breathed, staring up at Cole. “Marcus Vance? Are you...”
“He’s my estranged older brother,” Cole stated coldly, his eyes turning to flint. “Our family has served the Sterling dynasty for three generations. Marcus sold his soul to Brandon’s father when the company faced bankruptcy. I chose to stay loyal to your father. When your father died, he tasked me with watching over you from the shadows. I failed to stop you from meeting Brandon. I won’t fail you again.”
The cabin door was kicked open from the outside. Two heavily armed men in sterile white winter camouflage stepped in, their weapons lowered. “Transport is here, boss. We need to move before local law enforcement or Marcus’s sweep team traces the beacon.”
Within minutes, Cole had wrapped me and baby Leo in heavy wool blankets and transferred us into a modified, reinforced black SUV waiting beneath the pine canopy of an old logging trail. The interior was outfitted with medical monitoring gear. An IV was quickly slipped into my arm, pumping fluids and painkillers into my veins.
As the vehicle sped through the backcountry roads toward a private airfield outside Bozeman, Cole opened a secure military-grade laptop. He tapped several keys, bringing up a live feed.
My breath hitched.
It was a local news broadcast broadcasting live from the base of the national park. The banner read: TRAGIC ACCIDENT CLAIMS PREGNANT HEIRESS IN GLACIER PARK.
There on the screen stood Brandon. He was dressed in a pristine black down coat, his face buried in his hands as two state troopers gently comforted him. Gretchen stood two steps behind him, holding a tissue to her eyes, looking every bit the loyal, devastated executive assistant. But when Brandon momentarily lowered his hands to speak to a reporter, the camera caught his face for a split second.
His eyes were completely dry.
“Elena was my whole world,” Brandon told the microphone, his voice trembling with an Oscar-worthy performance of heartbreak. “And our unborn son... we had painted his room blue just last week. I tried to grab her. I lunged for her hand, but the ice... it gave way. I will spend the rest of my life wishing it was me who fell instead.”
“You monster,” I hissed, my nails digging into the leather upholstery until they bled. “You sick, soulless monster.”
“Let him celebrate,” Cole said quietly, though the cold fury in his tone made the air in the vehicle feel like winter. “The Flathead coroner’s office just signed the preliminary report based on the decoy body. The ring matched. The DNA sample has already been swapped in the state lab by our inside contact. Legally, Elena Hayes is dead. The funeral is scheduled for four days from now in Seattle.”
“Four days?” I looked down at my baby, who was peacefully nursing against me, completely oblivious to the war surrounding his birth. “What happens in four days?”
“In four days, Brandon will attempt to present a forged codicil to your father’s trust at the Sterling Global annual shareholder meeting,” Cole said, pulling up a series of financial documents on his screen. “The trust stipulates that upon your death, if no living heir survives, sixty percent of Sterling Global reverts to your legal spouse. He’s liquidating the entire company to an overseas conglomerate for pennies on the dollar to pay off his gambling debts in Macau.”
“He owes money?”
“Eighty million to the Triads,” Cole revealed. “That’s why he was desperate enough to push his pregnant wife off a cliff in broad daylight. If he doesn’t have the Sterling funds wired to an offshore account by the end of the week, they’ll send him home in pieces.”
I looked out the window at the endless expanse of pine trees racing past in the dark. A strange, steely calm settled over my shattered heart. The naive, gentle girl who had loved Brandon Hayes had died on that icy ledge in Montana. The woman who survived had a newborn son to protect, a father to avenge, and an empire to reclaim.
“Cole,” I said, turning to him with an intensity that made the hardened soldier blink. “I don’t want to hide in an underground bunker for the rest of my life while they profit off my father’s grave.”
Cole studied me for a long moment, a slow, dangerous smirk touching the corners of his mouth. “What do you want to do, Elena?”
“I want to attend my own funeral,” I said coldly. “And I want Brandon to see a ghost.”
Before Cole could answer, the driver slammed on the brakes. The SUV skidded sideways across the black ice, tires screaming.
Ahead of us on the deserted highway, three black armored trucks had formed a barricade. High-beam spotlights flared to life, blinding us completely. Through the windshield, a dozen men armed with tactical rifles stepped out into the road.
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At their center stood a tall man with a scarred face, holding a radio.
“Marcus,” Cole whispered, his hand instantly flying to his assault rifle. “They didn’t wait for the funeral. They’re here to scrub the witnesses.”
