Chapter 2 - Ambush On The Bridge
Screaming, I grabbed the armrest as the Maybach swerved violently across the wet asphalt. Rain pelted the cracked bulletproof glass like machine-gun fire.
“Hold onto me!” Julian barked. In one fluid, shockingly powerful motion, his arm wrapped around my waist, pulling me across the leather seat and slamming me flat against his chest. His body was pure granite, solid muscle shifting beneath his thin dress shirt. The scent of him enveloped me completely, even as my world spun out of control.
Up front, Mikhail swore in vicious, rapid Russian. His right hand controlled the wheel while his left snatched a heavy black pistol from beneath his coat. “Two vehicles, Boss! The Ivanov syndicate. They tracked the Brooklyn route!”
Syndicate? The word echoed in my skull like a detonated grenade. Hedge fund managers didn’t fight syndicates. Corporate executives didn’t have chauffeurs carrying semi-automatic weapons.
The pursuing black SUV lunged forward again, slamming hard into our rear bumper. The impact rattled my teeth, but Julian held me so tight against his ribs I barely moved.
“Mikhail, take the DUMBO exit ramp,” Julian ordered with terrifying calm. His heart was beating beneath my cheek—slow, steady, and dangerously rhythmic. He wasn’t panicked. He was calculating. “Clear the turn, deploy the tire spikes from the rear bumper, and get us into the warehouse alley.”
“Copy, Boss.”
Tires shrieked against slick asphalt. The car drifted wildly around a tight curve, throwing my weight hard against Julian. My hand instinctively pressed flat against his chest. Through the fine cotton of his shirt, I didn’t just feel rock-hard muscle—I felt thick, raised scar tissue running diagonally across his torso. A jagged reminder of violence.
Julian looked down at me, his eyes dark and dilated. For half a second, his gaze dropped to my lips before locking back onto the road behind us. “Keep your head down, Harper. Don’t move.”
From the rear chassis, a pneumatic hiss released a row of heavy metal spikes across the wet roadway. The pursuing SUV hit the trap at sixty miles per hour. Its front tires instantly disintegrated into shredded rubber. The massive vehicle lost control, spinning out violently and smashing into a concrete highway barrier with an explosion of sparks and shattered fiberglass.
Mikhail gunned the engine. The Maybach ripped down the off-ramp, cutting through the deserted cobblestone streets of Brooklyn’s industrial waterfront before diving beneath the shelter of a dilapidated brick warehouse. A rusted iron gate groaned open automatically, swallowed the car, and slammed shut behind us, plunging us into total darkness.
The engine cut out. The only sound left was the pounding rain on the corrugated tin roof above and my own ragged, desperate breathing.
I pushed myself up, my hands trembling violently against Julian’s chest. “What… what the hell was that?! Who are those people?! What kind of hedge fund are you running, Julian?!”
Julian didn’t answer immediately. He looked down at his shirt, which was now damp with rain and wrinkled from where my fists had clung to him. The cold shadows of the warehouse illuminated the harsh, sharp angles of his jaw.
“I told you yesterday that my family built Northline Capital,” Julian said, his voice flat and lethal. “What I didn’t tell you is that Northline was built to clean the money of the Romanov-Rourke organization. The largest organized crime syndicate operating on the East Coast.”
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The air vanished from my lungs. My knees went weak where I sat. “You’re… you’re the mafia.”
“I am the head of this family,” Julian corrected calmly, his fingers reaching out to cup my chin, tilting my face toward his. “And fifteen minutes ago, they tried to assassinate me. Which means they know about Redwood. And because you wrote the financial report exposing their shell companies, Harper… they know who you are, too.”
