CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 52 — The Flight of the Sovereign
By 3:00 AM, the private Gulfstream was tearing through the upper atmosphere at Mach 0.85, heading east over the Atlantic.
Inside the cabin, the atmosphere was a war room. Elena was hooked into three different satellite uplinks, her face illuminated by the harsh blue glow of her monitors.
"The hostile corporate buyout of the Phoenix Alliance didn't stop," Elena reported, her voice trembling with exhaustion. "The entity behind Nemesis LLC just liquidized two hundred million dollars in high-yield bonds to buy out our logistics network. Valeria, they aren't just buying your buildings. They are buying the private security companies, the server farms, the aviation lines. They are systematically boxing us in."
Valeria sat by the window, staring at the dark ocean miles below. On her lap lay the antique brass key.
"They aren’t trying to kill me, Elena," Valeria said softly, her thumb tracing the complex grooves of the key. "If they wanted me dead, they would have wired explosives to the loft. They wanted the key. They wanted the access code to the infrastructure."
Victor stepped into the cabin from the cockpit, holding a encrypted satellite phone. "I just got off the line with my contact at Interpol. The arrest of your father, Ernesto, was a theatrical setup."
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Valeria turned her head sharply. "What do you mean?"
"The federal marshals who handcuffed him on the courthouse steps? Two of them were found dead in a ditch outside O'Hare airport two hours ago," Victor said, his expression grimmer than she had ever seen it. "Ernesto didn't go into witness protection. He was extracted. He’s already in Europe."
