Part 5: The Choice on the Dike
The sound of rain beating against the car roof mingled with the heavy breathing of the men around me. Mark stood in our car's headlights, his face a mask of cold calculation. Thirteen years ago, he was the man I thought was my future. Now he was a stranger, a mercenary in a game that had lost all humanity.
"Stay in the car, Emma!" Frank snapped at me. He pulled a black pistol from under his coat and checked the magazine. "If you step out, they'll shoot us all."
"He won't shoot," I said, my voice miraculously calm from the pure adrenaline surging through my body. "Didn't he just say he needs the paperwork? If he shoots me, he'll never get the original documents. He knows I have them with me."
"It's a trap," said the driver. "They want to use you as a bargaining chip with Victor."
I looked at Mark through the windshield. He took a step forward, the automatic weapon loose in one hand, the walkie-talkie in the other. "You have thirty seconds, Emma," his voice sounded through the car radio again. "Victor has already taken the boy to the estate's basement. If I don't bring him the paperwork before midnight, Luuk goes into a cement mixer. Do you really think those Vance guards are going to protect you? They only want to secure the money!"
I looked at Frank. "Is that true? Do you work for the Vance family? Do you only want to save that money?"
Frank avoided my gaze for a fraction of a second. That was enough.
"My employers are the legal administrators of the Vance trust," Frank said rigidly. "Our priority is upholding the will."
"You don't care about my son," I whispered, and the shock of that realization cut deeper than the threat of Mark outside. "You only want to ensure Victor doesn't get the money. To you, Luuk is just as much an obstacle as he is to Victor."
"Emma, listen..." Frank began, but I didn't let him finish.
With a quick movement, I grabbed the door handle and pushed it ajar.
"No!" shouted Frank, reaching for me, but the driver held him back as the men outside cocked their weapons.
I stepped out into the freezing rain. The wind cut through my thin coat, and the water immediately washed over my face. I held the white envelope high above my head, soaking wet in the storm.
"Mark!" I shouted against the wind. "I'm here! But the documents stay with me!"
Mark smiled. A false, familiar smile that once reassured me thirteen years ago, but now sickened me. He beckoned me to come closer. "Smart girl, Emma. You've always been more sensible than your sister. She thought she could play hero by hiding the baby, and look where it got her. An unmarked grave."
"My sister at least had a conscience!" I yelled as I slowly walked toward him, step by step over the wet asphalt. "Why, Mark? Why did you do this for thirteen years? Why did you take my child from me?"
Mark shrugged, as if it had been a simple business decision. "You were too weak, Emma. After the accident, you were broken. And when I found out the child belonged to Julian Vance... well, I saw an opportunity. A billionaire's child is life insurance. Only your dear sister let me down by hiding him away."
He reached out his hand. "Give me the envelope. I'll take you to Luuk. You can see him. But afterward, you leave the country and I get that money."
I was now three meters away from him. The two armed men behind him kept their weapons trained on Frank's car.
"Swear to me he's still alive," I said with a trembling voice. "Swear to me Luuk is unharmed."
Mark pulled out a mobile phone and pressed a few buttons. He held the screen up to my face.
It was a livestream. A video of a dark, stone basement room. In the corner, a boy was tied to a chair with a cloth over his mouth. He had dark, curly hair and the exact shape of my eyes. My heart shrank. It was like looking into a mirror of my own youth. Luuk.
"See?" said Mark. "He's alive. But Victor is standing at the top of the basement stairs. If I'm not there with the paperwork within an hour, he pulls the plug."
At that moment, a gunshot rang out.
Not a shot from Mark's men, nor from Frank's. The sound came from the bushes along the dike.
Mark grabbed his shoulder and cried out in pain. A bloodstain quickly spread across his trench coat.
"Ambush!" shouted one of his men.
Before anyone could react, three black vans without license plates sped up the dike with squealing tires. Men in tactical clothing without insignia leaped out and began firing. It was a chaos of flashes, bullet fire, and screaming.
Frank pushed open the door from the SUV and shouted: "Emma! Get down!"
But I didn't duck to the ground. In the confusion, Mark dropped his phone onto the wet asphalt. I lunged forward, grabbed the phone from the ground, and ran—not back to Frank, and not to Mark.
I ran down the steep slope of the dike into the dark woods.
Behind me, I heard the sound of bullets chewing through the trees and the screams of men slaughtering each other over an inheritance. But I had the phone. And on the screen, which was still live-streaming, I saw a small detail in the background of the basement where Luuk was being held.
An old, rusted sign hanging on the stone wall.
Brewery The Golden Lion - 1894.
That wasn't the estate in Belgium.
Mark had lied. Victor wasn't in Scotland or Belgium. He was in the old, abandoned brewery on the edge of my own hometown, less than ten kilometers from where I was standing now.
As I stumbled through the underbrush, the phone in my hand rang. An incoming video call.
I answered while keeping running.
The face on the screen was that of an older man with an ice-cold expression and a deep scar running from his temple to his neck. Victor Vance.
He didn't look at Mark, but straight into my eyes.
"Hello, Emma," said the man with a voice that sounded like gravel grinding together. "I see you're the smartest of the bunch. You have forty minutes to get here. Bring the papers alone. If I see even a single security guard, I'll slit your son's throat right before your eyes."
The connection broke.
I stood alone in the pitch-black woods, rain streaming down my face, with only a soaking wet envelope and a phone with twenty percent battery left. And the clock was ticking relentlessly.
