Chapter 5 - The Price of Treason
Julian stumbled backward into the main office, bleeding from a graze on his shoulder.
He slammed the steel door shut, locking the deadbolt as bullets ricocheted off the exterior. He was hyperventilating, dropping his empty gun on the floor.
He scrambled toward the desk, pulling open drawers, desperately looking for a loaded magazine.
“Looking for this?” a voice asked from the shadows.
Julian froze.
The blood drained from his face completely.
He slowly turned around.
Silas sat in the leather chair in the corner of the room. He was holding Julian’s spare magazine in his left hand. In his right hand, his pistol was leveled directly at Julian’s heart.
Nadia stood by the door, her weapon drawn, securing the perimeter.
“Dad…” Julian choked out, his voice cracking. He fell to his knees. “Dad, please. They made me do it. The Volkovs… they said they would kill me if I didn't help them.”
Silas stood up slowly. He walked across the room, his footsteps echoing like a ticking clock on the concrete floor.
“You always were a terrible liar, Julian,” Silas said softly.
He stopped a foot away from the boy he had raised. The boy he had taught how to tie a tie. The boy he had bailed out of trouble a dozen times.
“You didn’t just betray me,” Silas said, his voice hollow. “You sent men for your mother.”
Julian shook his head frantically, tears streaming down his face. “No! No, I told them not to touch her! I swear to God, Silas, I told them to leave her out of it!”
Silas’s burner phone vibrated in his pocket.
He kept his gun aimed at Julian as he pulled the phone out and pressed it to his ear.
“Speak,” Silas commanded.
“Boss. It’s Marcus,” the voice said on the other end. “We secured your wife. She’s safe. Shaken up, but unharmed. We killed the intercept team.”
A microscopic fraction of the tension in Silas’s chest released.
He hung up the phone.
He looked down at Julian, who was weeping on the floor, begging for his life.
“Your mother is safe,” Silas said.
Julian let out a massive, hysterical breath of relief. “Thank God. Thank God. Dad, please. I can fix this. Let me fix this. I’ll leave the country. You’ll never see me again.”
Silas looked at the boy. He felt nothing. No anger. No sorrow. Just the cold, absolute void of a king who had to clean his own house.
“I know,” Silas said quietly.
He pulled the trigger.
The gunshot echoed through the warehouse, silencing Julian’s pleas forever.
The rain finally stopped just before dawn.
The docks were silent, save for the wailing of distant police sirens. The Volkov mercenaries had wiped out Julian’s men before fleeing into the night, abandoning the territory.
Silas walked out of the warehouse, stepping over the bodies of the men who had sworn loyalty to him just twenty-four hours ago.
Nadia was waiting by the stolen sedan. She had holstered her weapon.
She looked at Silas, studying the cold, empty look in his eyes.
“You have your city back,” Nadia said. “What’s left of it.”
Silas stopped a few feet away from her.
“You saved my life tonight, Elena,” Silas said, using her real name. “And I took yours twenty-two years ago.”
He took his pistol by the barrel and held it out, offering the grip to her.
“We had a deal,” Silas said. “We survive the night, and tomorrow you get to kill me. The sun is coming up.”
Nadia stared at the gun.
She looked at the man who had ordered her father’s death. The man she had spent a decade training to destroy. The man she had served coffee to every morning for four years, waiting for the perfect moment.
She slowly reached out.
She pushed the gun away.
“My uncle betrayed my father’s memory when he allied with a rat like Julian,” Nadia said softly. “The Volkovs are broken. The man who killed my father died a long time ago. All I see standing in front of me is a ghost.”
She turned around and opened the driver’s side door of the sedan.
“Your wife is at the safe house,” Nadia said, getting into the car. “I suggest you go to her, Silas. Because from this day on, she is the only person in the world who won’t try to put a knife in your back.”
The engine roared to life. Nadia pulled out of the alley, the taillights fading into the thick, gray morning fog.
Silas stood alone in the shipyard.
He had survived. He had won.
But as the cold morning wind blew across the harbor, chilling the blood on his hands, Silas Vance realized the true cost of his crown.
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He was the undisputed king of the city.
And he had never been more alone.
