Chapter 8 - The Waterfront Trap
I called in a medical evacuation team for Grant before leaving the ruined cabin.
I drove back to the city with a cold, absolute focus that left no room for mercy.
The engraved lighter confirmed exactly where Vanessa was taking her prisoners.
The abandoned warehouse on the Brooklyn waterfront was not just a random location.
It was the exact building where my grandfather had started our family’s criminal empire seventy years ago.
Vanessa was trying to make a poetic statement by destroying my future in the place my past began.
I arrived at the docks just as the storm broke, leaving a thick, heavy fog rolling off the dark water.
I parked several blocks away, approaching the rusty corrugated metal building through the shadows.
I bypassed the perimeter guards silently, snapping a neck and using a combat knife to clear the back entrance.
Inside, the warehouse was massive and smelled of salt, rust, and old motor oil.
A single floodlight illuminated a clearing in the center of the massive shipping crates.
I climbed the rusted metal stairs to the catwalk above, moving silently along the steel grating.
Looking down, I saw Vanessa standing in her ruined white designer suit.
She was surrounded by twenty heavily armed men loyal to her father.
In the center of the light, Mara was tied to a heavy wooden chair, looking beaten and exhausted.
Leo was lying on a cot nearby, breathing weakly through a portable oxygen tank.
Vanessa paced in front of them, twirling a loaded pistol around her manicured finger.
She shouted into the darkness, knowing I was already somewhere inside the building.
She demanded that I show myself, promising to make their deaths quick if I surrendered my territory to her.
I rested the barrel of my rifle on the railing, carefully lining up a shot on her top enforcer.
I took a deep breath, preparing to unleash hell on the people who had crossed me.
But before I could pull the trigger, Mara suddenly jerked her arms violently against the ropes.
She managed to slip one bruised hand free from the sloppy knot tying her wrist.
She reached into her coat pocket with lightening speed and pulled out a stolen fragmentation grenade.
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She pulled the safety pin out with her teeth and held the live explosive tightly against her chest.
Mara screamed at Vanessa to step away from her son, threatening to blow everyone in the circle to pieces.
