Chapter 3 - Blood on the Hardwood
The master suite of Rourke House was a monument to wealth and isolation, spanning the entire western wing of the estate with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the black, roiling Atlantic. Tonight, it looked like a battlefield.
Drawers had been pulled out and dumped across the Persian rugs. Safe doors hung open, their heavy steel mechanisms sheared away by industrial thermal charges. And standing in the center of the wreckage, holding a heavy leather case filled with uncut diamonds and bearer bonds, was Mason Bell.
Mason spun around at the sudden crash from the service landing, his service pistol half-drawn from its holster. When he saw Dominic stepping out of the shadows with a suppressed automatic pistol leveled at his chest, the chief of security froze. Behind Dominic, a quiet woman in a torn gray cardigan and sensible flats stepped out holding a combat blade with absolute, terrifying ease.
Mason let out a harsh, incredulous laugh, dropping the leather case onto the floor with a heavy thud.
"Dominic," Mason sneered, adjusting his suit jacket with a sickening veneer of calm. "I wondered how long it would take you to crawl out of the nursery. You really thought you could keep playing kingpin while living in a gilded cage with two crying orphans? The Syndicate owns the ports, Rourke. They own the judges in Brooklyn. And as of ten minutes ago, they own your house."
"You were my brother, Mason," Dominic said, his voice terrifyingly quiet, devoid of anger, stripped down to pure, surgical intent. "You held my wife's hand when she died."
"Amelia was weak," Mason spat back, his hand finally clearing his holster. "And you went soft the day she stopped breathing. You stopped expanding. You stopped taking risks. You wanted to play domestic house with a pair of toddlers while millions of dollars sat rotting in inactive accounts."
Mason didn't finish his sentence. He whipped his pistol up, aiming straight for Dominic's chest.
He never got the chance to pull the trigger.
Before Mason’s finger could even touch the metal, a silver flash cut through the dim light of the master suite. Mara’s combat blade spun through the air with lethal rotation, burying itself deep into the flesh of Mason’s right forearm.
Mason screamed, his weapon dropping from his nerveless fingers and clattering against the hardwood floor as blood sprayed across the expensive rug. He clutched his arm, stumbling backward against the mahogany dressing table.
Dominic didn't give him a second to recover. He crossed the room in two strides, grabbed Mason by the throat with his left hand, and slammed him down against the edge of the heavy oak desk with a bone-rattling crash that shook the room.
"Where is the secondary extraction team?" Dominic growled, pressing the barrel of his pistol hard against Mason’s temple.
"Fuck... fuck you, Dominic," Mason gasped, blood pooling beneath his arm where the knife was wedged deep into muscle and bone. "You're... you're dead anyway. The entire property is rigged with C4. The timer started the moment you triggered the security override in the basement."
Mara stepped forward, ignoring Mason’s groans. She walked over to the shattered master control terminal on the wall, her fingers flying across the glowing console with blinding speed, bypassing firewalls and security locks that would have taken a standard cyber-unit hours to crack.
"He's lying about the C4, Mr. Rourke," Mara said without looking up from the screen. "He doesn't have the clearance to rig explosives. But he did upload an encrypted data packet to an external server in Zurich three minutes ago. All your offshore accounts, your shipping routes, your political leverage—it's being mirrored right now."
Mason let out a wet, desperate laugh, blood bubbling at the corner of his mouth. "Too late... the transfer is at ninety percent. You're ruined, Dominic. Even if you kill me, you're a beggar by morning."
Dominic looked down at the man who had betrayed him for fifteen years of friendship. He didn't fire the gun. Instead, he pulled back his right fist and struck Mason square across the jaw with the force of a wrecking ball.
Mason’s eyes rolled back into his head, and he collapsed limp onto the floor, unconscious and bleeding out onto the designer rug.
Dominic stood over him for a second, breathing hard, then turned his gaze to Mara. She was still standing at the console, her fingers tapping the final sequence into the keyboard.
"Server locked," Mara announced calmly, pulling a small flash drive out of the terminal port and slipping it into her pocket. "Transfer aborted at ninety-four percent. The remaining six percent is garbage data we planted ourselves."
Dominic stared at her, the adrenaline still pumping through his veins like liquid fire. "Who the hell are you, Mara? You aren't just a nanny."
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Mara turned away from the console, smoothing down the front of her ruined gray cardigan as if she hadn't just dismantled an international conspiracy in a pair of orthopedic shoes. She looked up at him with those calm, pale green eyes.
"I told you when I applied for the job, Mr. Rourke," she said softly. "I have extensive experience in high-risk asset protection. You just didn't read past the references on page two."
