Chapter 8 - The Shadow of Helena Vance-8
"Helena?" I repeated the name, the pieces of a terrifying new puzzle clicking together in my head with nauseating speed. "Your former chief legal counsel? The woman who handled our divorce papers?"
"Not just our divorce papers," Blake said, standing up and pulling his phone from his pocket to check the penthouse lockdown protocols. "She was the architect behind the entire corporate restructuring of Harrington Green Energy after you left. When I suspected a leak in the legal department two years ago, she mysteriously resigned and moved to Zurich. I thought she was just taking a lucrative severance package. I didn't realize she was actually partnering with Vance."
"She didn't just partner with Vance," I said, walking over to the dressing table where my laptop was still connected to the convention center's secure network. "If she has access to the master backdoor in the energy matrix, and Vance is currently sitting in a federal holding cell..."
"Then Helena is stepping into the vacuum," Blake finished, his dark eyes hardening into chips of ice. "She doesn't just want the clean-energy patents, Emma. She wants absolute control of the entire grid. And she knows the only thing standing between her and total dominance is the cryptographic key locked inside your personal archive."
My blood ran cold. The boys.
"Marcus!" I shouted, dialing his private cell with trembling fingers while frantically packing my laptop into its leather case. "Marcus, pick up! Marcus!"
The phone rang twice before a muffled, chaotic sound came through the speaker—the unmistakable crash of breaking glass, followed by shouts and the heavy thud of a physical struggle.
“Emma—get out of the building!” Marcus's voice barked through the static, strained and breathless. “She brought a tactical team—they bypassed the lobby security using override codes—they’re already on the penthouse floor—!”
The line went dead with a sharp, piercing hiss.
"No, no, no!" I screamed, dropping the phone onto the sofa. I turned toward the door, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. "My boys are still in that penthouse! Blake, we have to get back there right now!"
"We're going," Blake said, his voice terrifyingly calm as he ripped open the green room door. He didn't hesitate; he grabbed my arm, pulling me out into the backstage corridor past the startled security guards and fleeing journalists. "I have a private chopper waiting on the roof of the McCormick Place marshaling yard. We'll be in the air in three minutes."
As we sprinted through the labyrinthine service corridors of the convention center, the reality of the situation crashed over me with crushing weight. For five years, I had believed that hiding from Blake was the only way to keep my children safe. But the truth was far more brutal: the world we lived in didn't care about our private betrayals or our bitter divorces. Wealth, power, and technology attracted monsters who wanted to control everything—and anyone who possessed the truth was a target.
We burst through the emergency exit doors into the freezing Chicago air. A sleek twin-engine helicopter sat idling on the tarmac, its rotors kicking up a violent storm of wind and snow dust.
Blake hauled open the cabin door, shoving me inside before climbing in beside me and slamming the hatch shut. He slapped the pilot on the shoulder.
"Gold Coast Residential Tower. Rooftop helipad. Floor it!" Blake shouted over the deafening roar of the turbine engines.
The chopper lifted off the tarmac with a violent lurch, banking hard to the left as it soared above Lake Michigan. Below us, the towering skyline of downtown Chicago stretched out like a jagged wall of glass against the gray winter sky.
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I gripped the leather armrest, staring down at the distant rooftop of our apartment building where a small, dark cloud of smoke was already beginning to rise into the freezing air.
"Hold on, boys," I whispered into the howling wind, tears streaming down my face. "Mom's coming."
