Chapter 13 - The Prison Confession
The tattooed driver navigated the backroads of New York with lethal precision, taking us far away from the smoking ruins of our stolen peace.
Damien held the boys tightly against his chest in the back of the dark van, his jaw clenched in absolute fury.
He explained that the driver was a former Spetsnaz operative he had hired through a black-market security firm to act as our ghost protocol.
"Arthur controls the police, the federal agencies, and the banks," Damien muttered, staring into the darkness.
"If we are going to kill a ghost, we need to know exactly how his syndicate operates, and there is only one person alive who knows his secrets."
I felt my blood turn to ice as I realized exactly who Damien was talking about.
We had to visit Evelyn Mercer in the federal maximum-security penitentiary.
By sunrise, the van pulled into the desolate, heavily guarded parking lot of the women's correctional facility.
Damien used his massive financial influence and a small army of expensive lawyers to secure an emergency, unrecorded visitation in a private room.
I left the boys sleeping safely in the armored van with the operative, following Damien through the cold, echoing corridors of the prison.
Evelyn was brought into the bleak visitation room wearing a faded orange jumpsuit, her wrists heavily shackled in iron chains.
The perfectly contoured makeup and designer clothes were gone, leaving behind a hollow, bitter shell of the tyrant she used to be.
She looked at Damien, her lips curling into a cold, psychotic smile as she sat down across from the metal table.
"I heard your little farmhouse burned to the ground this morning," Evelyn mocked, her voice dripping with venomous delight.
Damien slammed his fists onto the metal table, leaning so close to his mother that their noses almost touched.
"Tell me where Arthur is operating from, or I swear to God, I will buy this prison and make the rest of your miserable life a living hell," he growled.
Evelyn laughed, a dry, rattling sound that echoed off the concrete walls like a death rattle.
"You think you can scare me when the devil himself is already hunting you?" she whispered, her eyes flashing with genuine terror.
She confessed that Arthur’s leukemia was rapidly accelerating, and his bone marrow was completely failing.
He had dispatched an elite extraction team called the Vanguard, a ruthless mercenary squad that operated strictly outside international law.
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"He is on a heavily fortified private island off the coast of Nova Scotia, operating a shadow medical facility," Evelyn revealed, her voice shaking.
"He will rip those boys from Mara's arms, strap them to a surgical table, and drain the life out of them to save himself."
