REESE

chapter forty one (a).

Third Person POV:
New York, USA

Kings lose their thrones.

Power is nothing without control. Empires fall, but the ones that plummet are led by kings and queens who misinterpret their duties. One can lead, one can control, but one cannot do both.

The king and the throne are two separate entities, two compounding powerhouses that stay in power as long as they feed off of one another. The king, held up by a dutiful throne responsible for controlling its empire, leads the masses through the influence of that very throne. The throne, the unseen hand behind the king's reign, works quietly as its hands seep into every crack and over every surface until its grip grows so tight, it becomes impenetrable.

One cannot rule without the other. One cannot stay in power without the other; and when one side falls, the carefully created foundations of an empire start to crack.

"Come on, come on, pick up."

'You have now reached the voicemail box of Reese Vanderbilt, please leave a message at the tone.'

Fear didn't even begin to describe it. Classifying the emotion that currently rushed through Jonathon's veins as simple as fear would be a gross misjudgement. No, this was not fear. This was terror. Continuing to pace up and down the hallway, he turned his phone over in his hand, then he did it again and again and again. When that failed to alleviate the growing tension in his chest, he took off his jacket, then he loosened his tie.

Truth be told, Jonathon didn't know what he was doing. His erratic behavior was profoundly uncharacteristic on his part but right now he just didn't know what to do. All he knew was that he couldn't be in that boardroom a second longer, the room that he had been holed up in for the past hour and half as he watched his daughter lead an army into the Autonomous Port of Paris. For an hour and a half, the yacht cameras provided him a feed, for an hour and a half the comms gave him audio, for an hour and a half he had eyes and ears on his daughter and then suddenly, nothing.

The feed went out, the audio went out, and no one had an explanation for what had just occurred. That last remaining truck, those last two teams, that last bit of the American-English-Italian army that included his daughter, went completely radio-silent on enemy territory and none of his people, Stephen's people, or Alexander's people could tell him why.

Upon calling Alexander, his panic only grew. The Italian Don was on a three-way call with his brothers who were practically yelling from inside the narcotics filled semi-trucks still en-route to Italy, that teams five and six were not responding through their comms. The trucks were ordered to stop but there was little they could do. If they turned around then they would be taking a resource exhausted army and twenty tons of cocaine back towards a red zone that would now undoubtedly be swarming with French soldiers. Alex could send fresh soldiers and fresh gear over the border but their arrival would take hours. That meant teams five and six were on their own.

His daughter was on her own.

"Ry. Track her again." He ordered, eyes beginning to burn.

The A.I was quick to speak out loud. "I'm sorry sir, results are inconclusive. I cannot find Miss Vanderbilt's location."

"That's fucking impossible!" He gritted out, looking at the ceiling of the Vanderbilt estate. "The tracker is in her, it has never not worked! She created it herself, so why the fuck can't you find her!"

"Sir, I am receiving no signal. If you look at your phone, you will see a geographical map that shows where each individual tracker is. Your location, Miss sangha's location and Mr Williams' location is displayed clearly. Miss Vanderbilt's location is not. The last signal I received from the tracker was twenty minutes ago, on the Port of Paris. The signal is no longer there."