Chapter 12 - The Iron Flower
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The screen went dark, but the image of Daniel tied to that chair remained seared into Vivien’s retinas like white-hot iron.
The room began to spin.
Four hundred socialites were laughing around her, drinking champagne, oblivious to the fact that her brother had a gun pressed to his skull across town.
Sebastian looked down at her face, his eyes narrowing instantly as he caught the sudden, terrifying shift in her breathing.
“What is it?” he demanded, his voice cutting through the ballroom noise.
Vivien didn't speak.
She simply turned the phone toward him, showing him the photograph and the message.
Sebastian’s amber eyes flared with an infernal, volcanic fury that made Vivien instinctively take half a step back.
The muscle in his jaw twitched once, hard and sharp.
“Paul,” Sebastian whispered into his microphone, his voice dropping into a register that sounded like grinding millstones.
“Lock down the perimeter of Botanica Lux.”
“Nobody enters. Nobody fires until I am on site.”
“No!” Vivien gasped, grabbing his lapel with both hands, heedless of the fifty guests watching them from the surrounding tables.
“You saw the text! He said alone! If he sees your black SUVs, he’ll pull the trigger!”
“Vivien, listen to me,” Sebastian said, grabbing her wrists with gentle but unbreakable iron strength.
“Gallagher is cornered. He has lost his badge, his pension, his money, and his freedom.”
“He is not looking for a negotiation. He is looking for a murder-suicide.”
“I don't care!” Vivien cried, tears spilling over her lashes, ruining her makeup.
“That is my little brother! He is twenty-two years old! He has done nothing wrong in his entire life!”
“I am going to that alley.”
Sebastian stared down at her, his dark brows furrowed, watching the fierce, desperate courage burning in her tear-filled eyes.
She wasn't shaking anymore.
The terror had burned away, leaving behind the primal, unstoppable ferocity of a sister defending her family.
“You won't go alone,” Sebastian said, his voice dropping into absolute, calm certainty.
“You will walk through that back door.”
“And I will be three feet behind you in the shadows.”
“How?” Vivien choked out. “The alley has no cover!”
A slow, dark smirk touched Sebastian’s lips, dangerous and cold as an arctic winter.
“The Elm Street rail terminal borders the back lot of your flower shop, Vivien,” Sebastian murmured.
“I didn't buy that terminal for the freight trains.”
“I bought it because the underground maintenance tunnels run directly beneath your shop’s basement.”
He turned to Paul, who was already holding Vivien’s heavy shearling coat and a dark woolen sweater.
“Paul, take her to the service elevator.”
“Get her into the black sedan.”
“Have the tunnel hatch unsealed in five minutes.”
Sebastian reached down, his thumb wiping a hot tear from her cheek with startling tenderness.
“Keep him talking for sixty seconds, Vivien,” he whispered against her forehead.
May you like
“Just sixty seconds.”
“And I will make sure Ryan Gallagher never sees another sunrise.”
