Chapter 5 - The Corrupt Blockade
I stared at the threatening message on the GPS screen with pure, icy rage.
Vincent had used the stolen sixty million to buy the absolute loyalty of the entire police precinct.
I could see the flashing red and blue lights of the police barricade illuminating the bridge ahead.
Dozens of heavily armed, corrupt officers were standing behind concrete barriers waiting to execute us.
I knew my armored sedan could not survive a concentrated barrage from heavy tactical rifles.
I looked at Hannah, who was slowly losing consciousness from the severe blood loss.
I told her to hold tightly onto Grace because things were about to get extremely rough.
Instead of driving toward the heavily guarded bridge, I aggressively jerked the steering wheel to the right.
The heavy car smashed through the wooden guardrails of the adjacent waterfront park.
We plummeted down the steep grassy embankment directly toward the dark, freezing river.
The sedan slammed violently into the shallow water, sending a massive spray of mud into the air.
The engine sputtered and immediately died, plunging us into total darkness.
I quickly kicked my jammed door open and grabbed a waterproof emergency medical bag from the trunk.
I hauled Hannah out of the sinking vehicle and threw her arm over my shoulder.
I carefully tucked baby Grace securely inside my heavy waterproof trench coat.
We waded through the freezing, waist-deep water toward a set of old drainage pipes.
The corrupt police officers above were blindly firing their rifles into the sinking car, completely unaware we had already escaped.
We navigated through the dark, terrible-smelling sewer tunnels for nearly two miles.
We finally emerged in the basement of an abandoned warehouse on the east side of the city.
I kicked open a rusted door that led into a secret, off-the-books medical clinic run by an old family friend named Doc Sal.
Doc Sal took one look at Hannah's bleeding side and immediately rushed her onto a sterile metal table.
He worked frantically for an hour to remove the shrapnel and stitch her deep wound closed.
I sat in the corner, feeding Grace a bottle of warm milk I found in the clinic's tiny kitchen.
Doc Sal finally wiped the sweat from his forehead and told me that Hannah would survive the night.
I thanked him and asked if I could use his secure landline to call my remaining loyal captains.
Doc Sal nodded slowly and walked over to a small metal cabinet to retrieve a syringe.
He turned around with a dark, apologetic look in his tired eyes.
He told me he was incredibly sorry, but a man has to protect his own family first.
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He quickly plunged the syringe full of heavy sedatives directly into my injured shoulder.
Before my vision completely faded to black, Doc Sal whispered that Vincent had just placed a ten million dollar bounty strictly on the baby's head.
