“HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, YOU LIARS!”—I Caught My Millionaire Husband Kissing His Mistress in His Private Office on Our FIFTH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY, Then Walked Out Without Looking Back! But Hours Later, a Doctor Turned a Monitor Toward Me—and What I Discovered Would Change Both Our Lives Forever... / Chapter 37 / 80

Chapter 37 - The Ghost Fleet of the North

The tires screamed against the black ice of Interstate 94 North. Behind us, the skyline of Chicago was a jagged silhouette of darkness, pierced only by the flashing strobe lights of military checkpoints closing the city like a tourniquet.

The heater blasted hot, dry air into the cabin, smelling of dust and dried blood.

In the backseat, Mateo was softly humming a nursery rhyme to Clara, who had finally quieted down, her little thumb tucked into her mouth, her tiny brow furrowed as if she understood the nightmare unfolding around her.

Dante slumped in the passenger seat, his head resting against the cold glass. His skin was pale as paper, his lips turning a terrifying shade of blue.

"Where are we going, Dante?" I asked, my knuckles white on the steering wheel as I steered through a blinding wall of heavy lake-effect snow. "The highways are going to be blocked in twenty minutes. The Tribunal controls the airspace."

"The border..." Dante whispered, his voice trembling with exhaustion. "Thunder Bay. Isle Royale. Lake Superior is frozen solid near the straits. There’s an old smuggling corridor my family used during the Cold War. If we cross into the Canadian wilderness on the ice... their satellite tracking can't differentiate between our heat signature and the pack ice."

"You can't survive that drive," I said, glancing at the blood seeping through his jacket. "You’re bleeding internally, Dante. You need a hospital. You need a surgeon."

"There are no hospitals for us, Brianna," he said, turning his head slowly to look at me. His hazel eyes were sunken, swimming with pain, but within them burned a terrifying clarity. "Castiglione has assets in every emergency room between here and Montreal. The moment my name or Clara’s blood type is entered into a triage computer, a tactical team will be through the doors in five minutes."

He reached out with a trembling hand, laying his palm over mine on the gear shift.

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

"Don't," I choked out, fighting back the hot tears blurring the road ahead. "Don't apologize now. You lied to me for five years, Dante. You let me believe you were sleeping with that monster. You made me hate you."

"I had to make you hate me," he murmured, his breath catching in his throat. "If you loved me, you would have stayed close. If you stayed close, Arthur would have killed you the day Clara was born. I needed you to take the kids and run. I needed you as far away from Vance Global as humanly possible."

"Well, it didn't work," I snapped, swerving around an abandoned jackknifed semi-truck on the snow-covered asphalt. "Because I'm still here. And I’m not letting you die."

The satellite radio on the dashboard suddenly chirped. A red light blinked on the console screen, bypassing the encrypted firewall.

A voice, silky and ancient, flowed through the speakers: