Part 11: The Fall of the Bank
My gaze remained hooked on the small screen on the desk. The woman in the delivery van stared intently at the bank's entrance. Helena. She had survived the explosion in the brewery's basement. How was that possible? She had likely escaped through a secret escape tunnel just before the explosives went off, while Mark and Victor were left behind in the rubble.
And now she was here. In Zurich. To finish the job.
"Gabriel..." I choked out. "Look at the monitor."
Gabriel frowned and looked at the small satellite stream on his desk. As soon as his eyes hit the old woman's face on the screen, his already pale complexion turned ghostly white.
"My God..." he whispered. "She's indestructible."
"What does that attack protocol mean?" I asked, holding Luuk tightly by the arm.
Gabriel grabbed frantically for the landline phone on his desk. "Helena still has control over the Vance Group's private militia. Men who aren't on the bank's payroll, but on her personal offshore companies' payroll. If she activates the protocol at eight o'clock..."
He hit the intercom button. "Frank! Frank, get in here immediately!"
The heavy oak doors swung open. Frank stepped inside, but he wasn't alone.
Behind him stood two men in black tactical gear, their faces covered in balaclavas, armed with silenced submachine guns. Frank himself kept his pistol trained steadily on Gabriel's chest.
My stomach churned. Frank.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Vance," Frank said in an emotionless tone. "My loyalty has never been with the trust board. Helena Vance pays four times as much as the bank."
Gabriel stared at his security chief with a mix of disgust and pity. "Frank... you worked for me for thirteen years. I trusted you."
"Money knows no loyalty, Gabriel," Frank said coldly. He motioned to the two armed men. "Don't move. Mrs. Van Dijk, put that plastic envelope with the original documents on the desk."
Luuk clung to my coat. I felt his passionate trembling against my side.
"Frank," I said, stepping slowly in front of Gabriel and Luuk. "Helena is insane. She shot her own son, Victor, in the basement. Do you really think she's going to pay you when this is over? To her, you're as expendable as anyone else!"
Frank's eyes narrowed briefly behind his stern expression, but he shook his head. "Nothing's going to happen to me. As soon as the clock strikes eight, this office will be hermetically sealed. The transfer will be put in the name of Helena's new foundation, and the three of you will vanish into the building's vault. A vault located three hundred meters underground. No one will ever find you there."
I looked at the clock on the wall. 07:56.
Four minutes.
Gabriel stepped toward the desk. "Frank, listen to me. If you do this..."
"Silence!" snapped Frank, aiming his gun barrel right between Gabriel's eyes. "Not another word."
At that moment, Luuk looked at me. His eyes were wide with fear, but suddenly I saw something else in his gaze. A raw, unexpected cleverness.
Luuk slowly let his hand slip from mine. On the side of Gabriel's massive wooden desk, a heavy copper fire extinguisher hung on the wall. Luuk very carefully took one step to the right.
I understood immediately. I had to distract them.
"Frank!" I shouted loudly, pulling the envelope of documents from my coat and holding it high in the air. "Here they are! The original papers! Take them then!"
I made a motion as if to throw the envelope at him, but instead drove it with full force straight into the face of the nearest armed man.
At the exact same second, Luuk pulled the safety pin from the fire extinguisher with all his might and sprayed the thick, white foam directly into the eyes of Frank and the second man.
The room exploded into a cloud of white chemical powder.
"Don't shoot!" shouted Frank, blindly flailing his weapon around, half-blinded by the foam. Gunshots cracked through the room; the sound of shattering glass and ricocheting bullets filled the space.
"To the private elevator!" shouted Gabriel. He grabbed Luuk by the arm and pulled us toward a hidden panel in the wooden wall behind his desk.
Gabriel pulled out a golden key, inserted it into the hidden lock, and pushed the door open. It was a narrow, dark elevator shaft leading straight to the roof of the building.
We stepped inside just as Frank's men opened fire on the hidden door. Bullets ripped through the woodwork, but the heavy steel sliding door of the elevator clicked shut just in time.
The elevator shot upward with immense acceleration.
"Where are we going?!" I screamed against the roaring cables.
"To the roof!" said Gabriel, panting the adrenaline from his chest. "There's a helicopter on the pad! It's our only chance to get out of the city before Helena surrounds the entire building!"
The elevator stopped with a jolt. The doors slid open.
We stepped onto the helicopter pad. The cold morning wind of Zurich hit our faces. The sun was just rising over the snow-covered peaks of the Alps, and far below us, the howl of dozens of sirens echoed.
In the middle of the pad stood a large, black Eurocopter running. The rotor blades were already slicing through the air, ready for takeoff.
But as we ran toward the helicopter, the pilot stepped out.
He wore a flight helmet, but when he took it off, it turned out not to be a pilot.
It was a young woman with dark hair and piercing green eyes. She looked remarkably like my late sister, Sophie.
"Get in!" screamed the woman against the roar of the engines.
Gabriel stopped abruptly. "Who are you?!"
The woman looked at me and then at Luuk.
"My name is Charlotte," she called out. "I am Sophie's daughter. The secret daughter she gave up before she met you, Emma. And I'm here to fulfill my promise to my mother."
My world stood still again. A niece? Sophie's daughter?
But before I could ask anything, the stairwell doors on the roof blew open with a bang.
Helena Vance, supported by two armed men, stepped onto the platform. Her face was partially burned, but her gaze was that of a pure-blooded monster.
"So this is how it ends," shouted Helena through a megaphone. "Gabriel... my own brother... you betrayed the family heritage for an ordinary Dutch woman and her bastard."
Gabriel stepped forward onto the roof, placing himself directly between the barrel of Helena's gun and us.
"It's over, Helena!" shouted Gabriel. "The Swiss police are on their way! In five minutes, this entire platform will be swarming with special units. You can't get out of here anymore!"
Helena laughed—a shrill, tortured sound that cut through the roar of the helicopter. "Do you think I care about my own freedom, Gabriel? I am this family. If the Vance dynasty doesn't survive under my terms, then it won't survive at all!"
She aimed her weapon straight at Gabriel's heart.
"No!" screamed Charlotte, the young woman who had just claimed to be my sister's daughter. She leaped from the helicopter and pulled Luuk by the arm toward the back of the cabin. "Emma! Get in! Now!"
"Mom, come!" yelled Luuk in a panicked voice.
I wanted to run to them, but I couldn't leave Gabriel behind alone. For thirteen years, I had thought he was my enemy, a liar who had destroyed my life. But now I saw a man willing to die to give his biological son a chance at life.
"Gabriel, come with me!" I yelled, grabbing his arm. "We can fly away together!"
Gabriel looked at me. A strange, resigned peace rested in his eyes. He laid his hand on mine—his hand with the star-shaped scar.
"No, Emma," he said softly, almost inaudibly over the wind. "My place is here. I lived in the shadow of lies for thirteen years. I am complicit in what was done to you and Luuk. If I get on now, she will never stop hunting."
He gave me a powerful shove toward the open helicopter door.
"Take care of our son," he whispered.
Before I could react, Gabriel turned around and charged at Helena with all his weight.
"Gabriel, no!" I screamed.
Bullets cracked across the platform. Gabriel grabbed Helena by the shoulders and pushed her backward, away from the helicopter, straight toward the low parapet on the edge of the hundred-meter-high roof.
The two mercenaries fired at Gabriel, but it was too late. With a final, desperate burst of strength, Gabriel tumbled himself and Helena over the edge into the abyss.
Their bodies vanished into the mist of the early morning over Paradeplatz.
"Emma! NOW!" shouted Charlotte. She grabbed my coat and pulled me with brute force into the helicopter cabin.
The two mercenaries now aimed their weapons at the helicopter and began to fire. Bullets struck the tail of the craft with hard, metallic claps.
Charlotte pulled the pitch lever up. The helicopter tilted dangerously forward, made a sharp swing over the roof's edge, and dropped into the street's abyss before the engines roared and the craft climbed steeply upward, away from the bank building.
I lay on the floor of the helicopter, out of breath, as the sound of gunfire slowly faded. Luuk threw his arms around my neck and held me tight as if he never wanted to let go.
"Mom... is he..." stuttered Luuk.
I couldn't say anything. I buried my face in his hair and nodded silently. Gabriel was dead. He had given his own life to finally lift the shadow of the Vance family.
Charlotte steered the helicopter tightly over the peaks of the Alps toward the French border. She looked at me in the rearview mirror.
"I'm sorry about Gabriel, Emma," she said in a raspy voice. "But it was the only way."
I sat up and looked at the young face of the woman behind the controls. She had the exact same nose and eyes as my sister Sophie.
"Charlotte..." I said. "Is it true? Are you... Sophie's daughter?"
Charlotte nodded slowly. "Sophie was eighteen when she had me, long before you and she fought over Mark. She was forced by our parents to give me up for adoption. I grew up in France. Only two years ago did Sophie find me and tell me the whole truth about what Mark and the Vance family did to you."
She pulled a small data stick from her pocket with one hand and tossed it to me.
"Sophie collected evidence for thirteen years," said Charlotte. "Not just about the Vance family, but about the entire network of corruption Mark used. The data on that stick is enough to permanently freeze all assets of the Vance trust and transfer them to an international humanitarian foundation."
I stared at the small piece of black plastic in my hand.
"That means..." I whispered.
"That means the money is gone," Charlotte said with a slight smile. "There's nothing left to steal, nothing left to inherit, and no one has a reason to hunt Luuk anymore. You're finally free."
Luuk looked up. "Really free, Mom? No more people looking for us?"
I looked out the window of the helicopter at the golden-yellow sun breaking through the clouds over the mountains. The fight for billions, the lies about my past, the murders and betrayal... it had all been swallowed by the depths of Zurich.
"Really free, honey," I said, and for the first time in thirteen years, I felt a light, warm breeze in my chest.
But as Charlotte selected the landing frequency of a small private airfield in France, the helicopter radio crackled.
A voice spoke through the airwaves. A voice that didn't come from Zurich, but from the Netherlands.
"Mrs. Van Dijk? This is the Amsterdam police headquarters. We have a situation at your mother's house."
My heart shot to my throat again. "What happened to my mother?!"
"An unidentified vehicle just stopped in front of her door. And someone slipped a note under her door with your name on it."
