Chapter 3 - The Burn Protocol
They emerged through a storm drain two miles off the estate property.
The rain was coming down in sheets, washing the mud and blood from Silas’s hands. They stole a rusted sedan from a nearby commuter lot, Nadia hotwiring the ignition in under ten seconds.
They drove in silence through the torrential downpour.
Silas sat in the passenger seat, his mind calculating the impossible math of his survival. His empire was seized. His men were dead or turned. His son was a traitor.
“Where to?” Nadia asked, keeping her eyes on the slick road.
“The docks. Pier 44.”
“Julian will have men there.”
“I’m counting on it,” Silas said, his voice returning to the icy baritone that had made him a legend.
He reached under the dashboard of the stolen car, feeling for a specific bundle of wires. He yanked them out, revealing a hidden, encrypted burner phone wrapped in electrical tape. Silas had stashed these in hundreds of cars across the city over the decades.
Paranoia was the only reason he was still breathing.
He dialed a thirteen-digit number.
It rang once.
“Speak,” a mechanical, distorted voice answered.
“Protocol Lazarus,” Silas said.
A pause on the line.
“Boss. You’re alive.” It was Marcus, Silas’s chief accountant, hidden in a bunker three states away.
“Julian thinks he has the city,” Silas said. “He thinks he has the ledgers. He thinks the Volkovs are going to make him a king.”
“What are your orders, sir?”
Silas looked out the window at the passing city lights. His city.
“Burn it down,” Silas commanded. “Empty the Cayman accounts. Liquidate the shell companies. Transfer everything to the ghost accounts. Leave Julian with nothing but zero balances and bounced checks. When the Volkovs realize he has no money to pay their mercenaries, they will turn on him.”
“It will take twenty minutes to route the funds, boss. But it will wipe out seventy percent of our legitimate holdings.”
“Do it,” Silas ordered. “And Marcus?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Find my wife. If she’s alive, bring her home. If she’s dead... find the men who did it and keep them breathing until I get there.”
He hung up the phone and tossed it out the window into the rain.
May you like
Nadia glanced at him. “You just burned your own empire to the ground.”
“An empire is just money,” Silas said, pulling a spare Glock from the glovebox and checking the chamber. “Power is knowing how to build it twice.”
