Chapter 12 - The Balance of Ruin
Camille reached the deck of the listing vessel, hoisting Violet’s limp body with one arm while gripping the slick handrail with the other.
The smell of leaking diesel was overwhelming, slicking the tilting deck plates with iridescent rainbow grease.
Inside the narrow cabin, illuminated only by red emergency running lamps, three figures were frozen in a deadly tableau.
Marcus Vance was backed against the iron casing of the marine diesel engine, his drenched camel-hair coat discarded on the floor.
His left arm was locked tight around Elena’s throat, pressing her bruised body against his chest as a human shield.
His right thumb hovered over a modified industrial radio transmitter taped to a block of commercial blasting emulsion on the bulkhead.
Elena’s face was bloodied, her dark hair plastered to her cheeks with canal mud, but her eyes were wide and fierce.
Around her neck hung the torn remnants of a silver chain, missing the bell that had ended up in Camille's clinic.
Julian stood six paces away, his pistol leveled directly at the bridge of Marcus's nose.
"Step back, Julian!" Marcus screamed, his voice vibrating with adrenaline.
"You take one more step and I drop this toggle! We all go into the silt together!"
"You won't drop it," Julian said, his voice flat, completely devoid of tremor.
"You love your father's money too much to die in a ditch with the coal sweepers."
"I built Vance Maritime!" Marcus spat, spit flying from his lips.
"Our father was a senile drunk who wanted to give forty percent of the deep-sea terminals to a bastard daughter who collected stray cats!"
Elena shifted her weight, choking against his forearm.
"You poisoned him, Marcus," she rasped, her voice raw from screaming.
"I saw the prescription logs in the Zurich bank vault before you forged his will."
"Nobody cares about Zurich anymore!" Marcus snarled, pressing the metal transmitter against her temple.
Violet gave a weak, whistling cry from Camille’s arms.
At the sound of the bell chiming faintly from Camille’s pocket, Elena’s gaze flicked past Julian’s shoulder.
Her bruised face softened with shock.
"Violet...?"
Violet lifted her heavy head, her green eyes fixing on Elena through the red gloom.
Marcus’s eyes darted toward Camille in sudden panic.
"You," Marcus whispered, his eyes widening.
"The clinic doctor."
"Let her go, Marcus," Camille said, stepping over the threshold into the engine room.
"Look at your sister's chest. She has a fractured clavicle and internal bleeding."
"Shut up!"
"You're a businessman, aren't you?" Camille challenged, keeping her tone clinically flat, exactly as she had with Violet in the exam room.
"You calculate risk and return on every vessel you launch."
Marcus’s thumb twitched on the toggle switch.
"What would you know about return on investment, you underpaid butcher?"
"I know that blasting this engine room doesn't just kill Julian," Camille said, pointing her chin down at the floor plates.
"The fuel tanks underneath us hold two thousand gallons of marine-grade diesel."
"If that detonates, the blast wave will rupture the high-pressure gas main running three feet beneath Lock 9's retaining wall."
She stepped half an inch forward, deliberately catching his gaze.
"It will flatten the entire industrial park, including your new six-hundred-million-dollar container terminal across the basin."
"You're lying!" Marcus shouted, but his eyes darted nervously toward the vibration in the hull.
"Check the emergency schematics on the bulkhead," Camille pressed, her voice chillingly calm.
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"My father helped weld that gas line forty years ago. He knew where the weak joints were."
"And so do I."
