Chapter 5 - Debt of Blood
Evelyn Cross dropped her weapon immediately, falling to her knees with her hands raised high in the air, trembling violently. “Damen, please! It was Nathan! He forged the real estate contracts! He threatened to bankrupt my family if I didn't help him launder the offshore accounts! I had nothing to do with Samuel Bennett or the fire!”
Damen didn't even spare her a glance. “Tie her up and hand her over to the federal prosecutor’s doorstep with her complete personal banking ledgers,” Damen ordered Marco without stopping his forward march. “Let her spend the rest of her miserable life in a federal penitentiary wondering what her perfume smells like behind iron bars.”
Nathan Cole, however, was not giving up so easily. In the confusion of the breaching assault, he had managed to maneuver behind Clare’s chair. He hauled her upright, wrapping his left arm around her throat and pressing the cold barrel of his revolver directly against her temple.
“Stay back, Damen!” Nathan screamed, his voice cracking with hysteria. His refined mask had completely dissolved into madness. “Take one more step and her brains will decorate this freezing floor! Call your men off! Clear a path to the Panamanian freighter, or Lorenzo’s precious secret dies right now!”
Damen stopped ten paces away. The laser sights of four sniper rifles danced across Nathan’s forehead and chest, but Nathan kept his body tightly concealed behind Clare’s torso, using her as a human shield.
“You’ve lost, Nathan,” Damen said evenly, his voice remarkably steady. “Every bank account in Grand Cayman, Zurich, and Panama associated with your shell corporations has been frozen by emergency judicial order. You have no money, no crew, and nowhere on this earth to hide. You spent twenty years sitting at my table, eating my food, claiming to be my brother. And all the while, you were poisoning the well.”
“I built your empire!” Nathan shrieked, saliva flying from his lips. “You were a thug with romantic notions of loyalty and honor! I was the one who made you a billionaire! I cleaned the blood off your ledgers! I turned street rackets into corporate dynasties! And what did you give me? Lorenzo’s scraps! Lorenzo, who cared more about some pathetic hospital accountant than the future of our organization!”
Behind them, hidden near the reinforced frame of the SUV, a small figure darted from the shadows. Damen had explicitly ordered Mia to stay inside the vehicle with an armed guard, but Mia was Samuel Bennett’s daughter and Clare Bennett’s child—she did not stay put when her mother was in danger.
Mia silently grabbed a heavy steel wrench from an open mechanic’s tool chest near the vehicle’s tire. Moving with incredible stealth across the salt-dusted floor, she slipped into the blind spot behind the shipping crates.
“Nathan,” Clare gasped through the pressure on her windpipe, her eyes meeting Damen’s with unwavering strength. “Do it. Shoot me. Because the moment you pull that trigger, Damen will peel your skin off inch by inch. Mia is safe. That’s all that matters.”
“Shut up!” Nathan roared, his finger tightening on the trigger.
At that exact second, Mia lunged from behind the wooden pallet and slammed the heavy iron wrench with all the strength in her twelve-year-old body straight into the back of Nathan’s right knee.
The crack of bone was sickeningly loud. Nathan shrieked in agony as his joint buckled inward, his weight collapsing instantly. The revolver tilted upward, firing a wild round into the empty metal rafters above.
Clare threw her entire weight forward, tumbling out of Nathan’s grasp onto the freezing floor.
Damen didn't waste a millisecond. He crossed the distance in a single explosive stride. His heavy boot kicked the revolver out of Nathan’s hand, sending it skittering fifty feet across the ice into the harbor basin. Then, Damen’s massive fist crashed into Nathan’s jaw, dropping the traitor flat onto his back.
Nathan lay sputtering on the concrete, spitting broken teeth and blood, clutching his ruined knee. He looked up into the towering silhouette of Damen Caruso, finding only the cold abyss of judgment.
“Mia!” Clare wept, dragging herself toward her daughter despite the zip-ties binding her wrists.
Mia dropped the wrench and fell to her knees, throwing her arms around Clare’s bruised neck. “Mom! I found him! I played the tape! He listened!”
Marco immediately knelt beside them, swiftly cutting Clare’s bonds with a combat knife. Clare pulled Mia tightly against her chest, sobbing uncontrollably into her daughter’s wet hair, kissing her forehead over and over again.
Damen stood over Nathan, his weapon lowered. Nathan looked up, his voice a pathetic whimper. “Damen... please... we were friends for twenty years... have mercy...”
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“Mercy is for men who have a soul, Nathan,” Damen replied softly. “Lorenzo showed you mercy for months, hoping you would repent before he died. You gave him poison. You gave my infant daughter to the flames.”
Damen raised his pistol and pulled the slide back with a resounding, final click.
