“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 72 / 80

Chapter 72 - Flight Over the Alpine Razor

The wind at the summit of Monte San Primo was a living, predatory beast. It screamed across the jagged limestone ridges, whipping snow and frozen gravel into my face as I burst through the rusted iron bulkhead of the funicular station.

Below me, Lake Como lay like an ink-black serpentine beast coiled between the shadows of the Italian Alps. Above me, perched on a cleared concrete helipad surrounded by pine trees bowed low by the gale, sat a midnight-black Sikorsky S-76. Its rotor blades carved through the freezing fog, beating the air with a rhythm that felt like a sledgehammer striking my chest.

Two men in sterile, unmarked tactical gear flanked the boarding stairs, assault rifles slung across their chests, their faces masked beneath dark visors.

“Mrs. Vance,” one of them shouted over the deafening whine of the turbine engines, stepping forward with an open biometric scanner in his gloved hand. “Place the child’s right thumb on the pad. Now!”

Leo buried his face into the hollow of my neck, weeping softly. “Mommy, where is Daddy? Where is he?”

“Hold on to me, baby,” I whispered through chattering teeth. My fingers were numb, stiff with adrenaline and terror. I pulled his tiny thumb out of his sleeve and pressed it firmly against the glowing green glass.

A high-pitched chime cut through the engine noise. The scanner flashed deep amber, then snapped to a brilliant, cold emerald.

*VERIFIED: HEIR DESIGNATE 02 — VANCE/CASTIGLIONE.*

The guard looked up, his voice utterly devoid of human emotion through his comms mask. “Board. You have twenty-two seconds before remote ignition aborts.”

I gripped the titanium drive hidden inside the lining of my boot, stepped onto the skid, and hauled myself into the pressurized cabin. The heavy door slammed shut behind us with the definitive clunk of a bank vault closing. The cabin instantly sealed, the roar of the rotors muffled into a low, vibrating hum that set my teeth on edge.

Inside, the luxury was sickening. Tufted leather seats, polished mahogany trim, and crystal decanters held in gold brackets—a floating gilded cage designed by billionaires who viewed human slaughter as a line item on an offshore balance sheet.

On the bulkhead monitor mounted opposite my seat, a digital map flickered to life. A glowing red trajectory line extended north, slicing cleanly over the Swiss border toward Zurich.

Beneath the flight path, a small inset window displayed a live biometric readout:

*SUBJECT: DANTE VANCE.*

*HEART RATE: 142 BPM.*

*PROXIMITY TO BORDER: 18.4 MILES.*

*MICRO-CHARGE STATUS: ARMED / SYNCHRONIZED.*

My breath caught in my throat. The synthesized voice that had haunted the catacombs hissed through the hidden cabin speakers, crisp and aristocratic, carrying the ancient cadence of Old World aristocracy.

“A mother’s devotion is such a predictable currency, Laura,” the Founder spoke, the sound vibrating through the leather seats. “You chose wisely. Had you hesitated three minutes longer, you would have arrived in Zurich as a widow with an orphan. Instead, you arrive as a guest of the Sovereign Council.”

“You are a coward hiding behind an encrypted satellite,” I hissed, tightening my arm around Leo, staring directly into the wide-angle camera lens embedded above the monitor. “You gave Dante that scar when he was a child. You groomed him, bought him, turned his entire life into a trap!”

A dry, rustling laugh filtered through the intercom, sounding like dry autumn leaves scraping across a tombstone.

“Dante was an orphan plucked from the gutter of Milan, given an empire, an education, and a seat at the table of men who govern nations,” the Founder replied coldly. “Every luxury he gave you—every diamond on your finger, every square foot of that glass tower in Chicago—was paid for with Castiglione blood. He thought he could steal the trust ledger, fabricate an identity, and play house with an architect’s daughter.”

The helicopter banked sharply, cutting through a dense wall of storm clouds as the jagged, snow-capped peaks of the Swiss Alps rose beneath us like rows of petrified shark teeth.

“You won’t get his signature,” I spat, defiance hardening the marrow of my bones. “He will never let you have Leo.”

“He will not have a choice, my dear,” the voice whispered, chillingly serene. “Look at your screen.”

The monitor split. On the right side, an infrared satellite feed zoomed into a desolate gorge between two towering snowbanks near the Italian frontier. A lone snowmobile was cutting through the blizzard, kicking up a rooster tail of white powder as it roared toward the crumbling, barricaded mouth of a forgotten mountain railway tunnel.

Dante.

He was moving at suicidal speed, racing the clock against a border he could not cross above ground.

And then, my stomach plummeted.

Hovering five hundred meters behind Dante’s heat signature on the satellite display were three smaller, blindingly hot red blips.

Hunter-killer drones.

“He believes the old tunnels will mask his telemetry,” the Founder said softly. “He forgets who drew the blueprints for the Alps.”

The screen flashed as the drones lowered their altitude, their forward cannons warming up into bright white thermal blooms.