Chapter 6 - Bloodline Secrets
The silence inside the shipping terminal was absolute, broken only by the steady drip of condensation falling forty feet from the metal rafters onto the concrete floor.
Victor stood frozen, his Kimber .45 slowly lowering an inch as he stared up at the catwalk. The woman standing on the steel platform, flanked by four heavily armed private contractors, was the woman who had tucked him into bed as a child, the woman who had wept openly over his father’s casket seven years ago.
“Mother?” The single word tore from Victor’s throat, hollow and completely stripped of his usual command.
Helena looked down at her only son with an expression that held neither malice nor remorse. It was the face of a CEO reviewing an unfavorable quarterly earnings report.
“You shouldn’t have come back for the girl, Victor,” Helena said, her smooth voice carrying effortlessly through the cavernous space. “I spent eighteen months orchestrating this transition. You were supposed to be arrested at this terminal cleanly. Three years in an executive minimum-security facility while the public scandals blew over, and then you would have retired to our villa in Lake Como with enough legitimate wealth to live like a king for three generations.”
“You set me up?” Victor stepped forward, his knuckles whitening around the grip of his weapon until the metal creaked. “You authorized Leonard to siphon forty-eight million dollars? You put a hit on an innocent woman in Evanston?”
“There are no innocent people in our world, Victor,” Helena answered coldly, resting her gloved hands on the metal railing. “William Hayes realized that thirty years ago. He thought he could sit on the fence, laundering money for your father on weekdays and preaching morality on Sundays. When he threatened to hand the syndicate’s master charter over to federal prosecutors, he signed his own death warrant.”
Kiara stepped out from behind Victor’s broad frame, her eyes blazing with raw, burning contempt. “My father never threatened you. He tried to get out. He gave your husband the option to dismantle the human trafficking corridors voluntarily!”
Helena turned her icy gaze onto Kiara, her lips curling into a faint, dismissive sneer. “William was an employee, little girl. Employees don’t dictate corporate policy to the board of directors. Your father thought his clever little ciphers made him untouchable. But he forgot that a cipher is only as strong as the person holding the key. When Anthony refused to pull the trigger on his favorite pet accountant, I had to handle the situation myself.”
The revelation hit Victor like a physical blow. He staggered forward half a step, his chest heaving with suffocating realization. “You killed William Hayes? Not the Morettis? Not Leo?”
“Leonard was an idiot who couldn't balance a checkbook without William holding his hand,” Helena scoffed. “He was useful for signing shell corporation documents, nothing more. But your father... your father had grown soft, Victor. He let William hide eighty percent of our liquid assets behind that ridiculous cryptex because he secretly wanted a way out. He wanted to leave this life and take us to Europe.” She adjusted the fur collar of her trench coat. “I didn't marry Anthony Rinaldi to retire to an olive orchard. I married him to rule Chicago.”
“And what about me?” Victor’s voice dropped into a pitch of terrifying, low vibrato that made the armed men beside Helena visibly tense. “Was I just another asset on your balance sheet?”
“You are my son,” Helena said softly, though her eyes remained dead glass. “And I offered you the easy way out. But you insisted on digging up William’s grave. You brought his daughter into my city. You cracked the master ledger.” She raised one delicate hand, signaling the mercenaries standing beside her. “If you won’t take the golden parachute, Victor, then you leave me with only one operational choice.”
The lasers of four tactical rifles snapped onto Victor’s chest.
“Victor, down!” Kiara screamed, throwing herself against his right side just as the catwalk erupted into gunfire.
Victor reacted with inhuman speed. He grabbed Kiara with one arm, spinning his massive frame to shield her entire body with his back, and tackled her behind a heavy steel shipping container just as a stream of armor-piercing rounds gouged craters out of the concrete floor where they had been standing seconds before.
A sharp, ragged grunt tore from Victor’s throat as one round caught him high in the right shoulder, spinning him into the steel wall.
“Victor!” Kiara cried, catching him before he hit the ground. Her hands instantly came away slick with crimson blood that soaked through his tailored shirt. “You’re hit!”
“It’s a through-and-through,” Victor ground out between clenched teeth, his face pale with pain but his eyes burning with absolute, feral fury. He shoved a fresh magazine into his .45 with his uninjured left hand. “The gold drive... do you have it?”
Kiara reached into the pocket of her coat, pulling out the solid gold drive they had retrieved from the cryptex. “I have it. But what does it do?”
“The terminal’s main fiber-optic mainframe is inside the security office on the second level,” Victor whispered, blood trickling down his arm onto the cold floor. “My father built a hardwired failsafe into the building’s power grid. If you upload that drive into the central terminal, it doesn’t just broadcast the ledgers to the authorities. It triggers an industrial shutdown protocol. Every electronic lock, every steel blast door, every security gate in this facility seals shut permanently.”
May you like
He looked into her eyes, reaching out with his bloody left hand to gently cup the side of her face. “You run for the office, Kiara. I’ll draw their fire.”
“No,” Kiara said fiercely, gripping his wrist with both hands. “I’m not leaving you behind to bleed to death on this floor! We finish this together!”
