Chapter 18 - The Midnight Strike
The private airport hangar was cavernous, echoing with the sound of heavy rain pounding against the metal roof.
I stood perfectly still in the center of the dimly lit room, a single steel table separating me from the heavy hangar doors.
Julian arrived exactly at midnight, flanked by three massive, armed mercenaries whose faces were covered in dark masks.
He walked with the arrogant swagger of a man who believed he held all the winning cards in a high-stakes poker game.
He tossed his wet umbrella aside and threw a stack of legal documents onto the cold steel table.
The papers were a total surrender of his parental rights, exactly as I had demanded.
Julian smiled, his charming mask slipping to reveal the desperate, cornered animal underneath.
He demanded the fifty million dollars in untraceable bearer bonds, threatening to unleash his men if I tried to stall.
I calmly reached into my designer briefcase and pulled out a sleek, heavily encrypted laptop.
I turned the screen toward Julian, but it did not display a financial transfer or an offshore bank account.
The screen displayed a live, high-definition video feed of the European syndicate boss sitting in a luxurious office.
Julian’s face went completely white, the arrogant smirk melting into a mask of pure, unadulterated horror.
I casually informed Julian that I had not brought fifty million dollars to buy his silence.
I had brought the very men he had stolen from to collect their unpaid debts directly from his flesh.
The three mercenaries flanking Julian suddenly turned their weapons away from me and aimed them directly at his head.
Julian stumbled backward, realizing that his own hired guns had been bought off by the European bosses hours ago.
He was completely betrayed, trapped in a hangar with the very ghosts he had been running from.
He lunged across the table toward me in a desperate, final act of violent rage, his hands reaching for my throat.
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I did not flinch, stepping smoothly to the side as my security chief, Vance, tackled Julian hard onto the concrete floor.
The sound of sirens began to wail in the distance, tearing through the heavy sound of the falling rain.
