## Chapter 14: The Bridge of Flowers
The service tunnel terminated in a rusted iron grate, overlooking the dark, swirling eddies of the Seine. Rain lashed against the stone embankments of Paris, blurring the city's neon reflection into streaks of cold blue and orange. Behind them, the heavy rhythmic thud of the Cobalt Sentinels' boots grew louder, echoing through the narrow stone throat of the passage.
"They've reached the tunnel entrance," Silas said, his voice dropping into a combat-low register. He checked the magazine of his sidearm, his eyes scanning the pitch-black water below. "Lulan, we have thirty seconds before they're on top of us."
"Kael, the grate," Lulan commanded.
Kael didn't use a crowbar. He pressed a small, disc-shaped device against the rusted hinges. A high-frequency vibration hissed, turning the metal to brittle dust in seconds. Lucian kicked the grate outward, and it vanished into the river with a muffled splash.
"Jump," Lulan said.
It wasn't a request. One by one, the Lascourine children disappeared into the abyss. They didn't scream; they had been trained in high-altitude water entries since they were five. Silas went next, followed by Lulan.
The water was a shock of freezing silk, pulling at their clothes and draining the warmth from their limbs. But as they surfaced, they weren't met by the police or the current. They were met by the **Viper-S**, a low-profile, black-matted submersible boat that sat so low in the water it was invisible to radar.
The hatch hissed open. The family scrambled inside, the interior of the craft a stark contrast to the rain—glowing with sterile white light and packed with advanced medical monitors.
"Status," Lulan gasped, stripping off her wet silk jacket to reveal a tactical bodysuit underneath.
"Thermal cloaking is at ," Kael reported, sliding into the navigator's seat and drying his tablet with a microfiber cloth. "The Sentinels are standing on the bank looking for bodies. Their satellites are seeing nothing but cold water."
### The Shadow's Strategy
"Where to, Mother?" Lucian asked, his hand resting on the hilt of his ceramic blade. "The airport is locked down. Kael says Genevieve has declared a 'Public Health Emergency.' They'll scan every plane leaving the country for our DNA."
Lulan walked to the center of the craft, where a holographic map of Paris shimmered into existence. She didn't look at the airports or the borders. She pointed to a small, secluded estate on the outskirts of the city—**The Valois Manor.**
"We aren't leaving," Lulan said.
Silas wiped the river water from his face, his eyes narrowing. "You want to go to her home? Lulan, that's the most heavily guarded fortress in France. It's a suicide mission."
"It's not a mission, Silas. It's a house call," Lulan replied. She pulled a digital medical scan onto the main screen. it was the heart-map she had secretly captured from Genevieve during their confrontation at the Gala.
"Look at the left ventricle," Lulan pointed to a flickering red abnormality. "Genevieve de Valois has **Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy**. It's a genetic ticking time bomb. The stress I caused her tonight didn't just hurt her feelings—it triggered a fatal arrhythmia. She is currently dying, and her private doctors are too afraid of her to tell her the truth."
"You want to save her?" Bastian asked, his voice filled with rare confusion. "After she tried to kill us?"
"I want to own her, Bastian," Lulan corrected. "If she dies tonight, her son Julian takes over. Julian is a fanatic; he will sign the Embargo just for the glory of it. But if Genevieve lives, she will owe the Lascourine family her very heartbeat. I don't want a martyr. I want a puppet."
### The Price of a Heartbeat
Silas let out a short, grim laugh. "You're going to break into her house, perform illegal heart surgery on the most powerful woman in Europe, and then force her to sign a treaty before she even wakes up from the anesthesia?"
"Correct," Lulan said, reaching for her surgical kit. "Lucian, you'll handle the perimeter. Kael, I need you to blind their internal medical monitors so her staff thinks she's just sleeping. Elara, you're my lead assistant. This will be the first time you perform a **Transvascular Myectomy** on a live subject."
Elara's eyes brightened with a cold, intellectual hunger. "The risk of a perforation is in these conditions, Mother."
"Then don't let your hand shake," Lulan said, her voice turning into a blade.
"Silas," Lulan turned to him, her expression softening for a fraction of a second. "I need you to keep the world away from that door for forty-five minutes. Can you do that?"
Silas checked the charge on his weapon and looked at the woman who had turned the world's most dangerous profession into an art form.
"I'll give you an hour," he said. "Just make sure she's alive enough to pick up a pen."