Chapter 5 - The Ghost
Declan wiped the blood from his hands and stepped closer to the high-definition monitor.
The man in the tailored suit smiled coldly at the camera.
He held up Gemma's stolen encrypted phone for Declan to see.
Declan pressed the intercom button, his voice vibrating with pure rage.
He demanded to know why the Volkov family was breaking the truce so quickly.
The man on the screen chuckled and adjusted his expensive silk tie.
He spoke perfect English, devoid of any heavy Russian accent.
He told Declan that the Volkov family had absolutely nothing to do with this.
He explained that he had simply hired Russian mercenaries to make it look like a mob war.
Declan narrowed his eyes, trying to recognize the arrogant face on the screen.
The man typed a sequence into the encrypted phone, bypassing the first security wall.
He announced that he was initiating a complete drain of the Morrow family offshore accounts.
Declan warned him that the phone required a biometric retinal scan to finalize any transfers.
The man reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, sealed glass jar.
Inside the jar floated a human eyeball preserved in clear liquid.
Declan felt a wave of nausea crash over him.
The man scanned the jar against the phone's camera, and the terminal beeped in approval.
He leaned closer to the lens, his smile widening into something genuinely psychotic.
He asked Declan if he recognized his own uncle's eye.
Gemma gasped from the medical table, horrified by the brutal display.
Declan realized exactly who he was looking at.
It was Kieran Morrow, his older brother who had supposedly burned to death in a car crash ten years ago.
Kieran casually tossed the glass jar onto the ruined floor of the office.
He told Declan he had exactly one hour to surrender the empire, or he would kill someone else.
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To prove his point, Kieran stepped aside to reveal a bound hostage kneeling in the corner.
It was Gemma's twenty-year-old sister, Chloe.
