Chapter 3 - Blood on the Leather
The black Maybach was already idling in the subterranean loading bay, its twin-turbo V12 engine purring with a low, predatory hum. The rain outside was deafening—a relentless deluge crashing against the concrete apron, smelling of wet soot and ozone.
Leo shoved the heavy reinforced door open. “Move, move!”
Vincent shoved Mave into the rear cabin, diving in immediately behind her before the armored door slammed shut with the heavy, vacuum-sealed thud of a bank vault. Leo jumped into the front passenger seat, while Marcus, Vincent’s veteran wheelman, slammed the transmission into drive.
The tires shrieked against the damp concrete, throwing Mave hard against the leather seatback as the heavy sedan launched up the ramp and into the street.
“Seatbelt,” Vincent barked, already pulling a customized Glock 19 from his shoulder holster, checking the chamber with a crisp, metallic snap.
Mave’s hands were trembling so violently she couldn't latch the buckle. “Vincent, talk to me. You’re scaring me.”
He reached across the console, his fingers brushing roughly against her hip as he yanked the strap across her chest and clicked it into place himself. For a split second, his face was inches from hers. She could feel the ragged heat of his breath, could see the tiny gold flecks rimming his pitch-black irises.
“You’ve spent three years looking at numbers, Mave,” he said, his voice low and tight. “You think this city runs on spreadsheets and banking regulations. It doesn't. It runs on flesh, steel, and old debts. Nikolai Volkov is an enforcer for the Romanian syndicates. He was supposed to die three years ago when we severed their pipeline into the Brooklyn navy yard.”
“And the missing thirty thousand I flagged this afternoon?” she pressed, connecting the dots with the cold precision of her analytical mind. “The shell company in the Caribbean? That wasn't an internal embezzlement, was it?”
Vincent’s jaw tightened. “It was a digital breadcrumb. Volkov used our own automated payroll system to pinpoint your clearance level. He didn't want the money, Mave. He wanted to know who held the keys to our encrypted routing logs.”
A cold bead of sweat trickled down the nape of Mave’s neck. “Me.”
“He knows you’re the only person alive besides me who can authorize cargo release codes across the eastern seaboard,” Vincent said, sliding a fresh magazine into his sidearm. “To them, you aren't just an assistant. You’re the entire skeleton key to the Costa empire.”
“We’ve got visual!” Marcus shouted from the front.
Through the rain-streaked windshield, headlights suddenly flared in the rearview. The low-slung gray sedan from downtown had blasted through a red light at 5th Avenue, its engine roaring like an angry hornet as it closed the gap at eighty miles an hour.
“Leo, take the glass,” Vincent commanded calmly.
Leo rolled down the front passenger window three inches, cold rain and the howl of the storm instantly flooding the cabin. He leveled an automatic submachine gun through the slit.
Crack-crack-crack-crack!
Muzzle flashes illuminated the flooded asphalt. The windshield of the pursuing sedan spider-webbed, but the vehicle didn't slow down. It was armored—reinforced military-grade steel designed for urban ambushes.
“They’re boxing us in!” Marcus yelled, wrestling the steering wheel.
A second vehicle—a black commercial van—screeched out of a cross street on 54th, slamming violently into the Maybach’s passenger side.
BOOM!
The impact sounded like an artillery shell detonating against the chassis. The Maybach spun across three lanes of traffic, rubber burning against the wet asphalt, before Marcus regained traction with a savage counter-steer.
Mave screamed as her head clipped the reinforced window frame, white spots blooming across her vision.
Instantly, an arm like an iron band wrapped around her waist, dragging her down into the footwell. Vincent’s massive frame covered her completely, shielding her head and torso with his own body.
Clack-clack-clack-clack-clack!
A hail of high-caliber rounds peppered the rear glass. The armored laminate held, but the surface fractured into a dense, opaque web of white fractures.
“Mave, stay down!” Vincent roared over the deafening cacophony of gunfire and shattered mirrors.
She was pinned beneath him, her cheek pressed against his chest. Through the fine silk of his shirt, she could hear the savage, accelerated rhythm of his heart. Yet amidst the violence, his hands were remarkably gentle, cradling the back of her head, his fingers tangled protectively in her dark hair.
“Marcus! Take the Queensboro underpass!” Vincent yelled, leaning up just enough to thrust his weapon through the driver's side gun port.
Vincent fired three deliberate, rhythmically spaced shots.
Through the rear cameras displayed on the dashboard screen, Mave watched the pursuing gray sedan’s front-left tire disintegrate. The car violently pitched, rolling three times across the flooded highway before detonating in a massive fireball of gasoline and twisted metal.
“One down!” Leo grunted, slamming a fresh drum magazine into his weapon. “The van is still on our bumper!”
The Maybach plunged into the concrete cavern of the lower bridge deck. The darkness swallowed them, punctuated only by the sickly yellow flicker of overhead sodium lights.
Marcus cut the wheel hard, deliberately fishtailing the heavy sedan into the side of the chasing van. Metal shrieked against metal in a shower of blinding sparks. The van lost its line, ricocheting off the concrete abutment and careening into the river barricade with a sickening crunch of collapsing steel.
Silence fell over the cabin, save for the wipers beating a frantic, rhythmic tempo against the ruined windshield.
Vincent didn't move immediately. He remained draped over Mave, his heavy breathing warming the cold skin of her neck.
“Are you hit?” he rasped, his voice raw, his hands moving frantically down her arms, checking her shoulders, her ribs, her waist for blood. “Mave, look at me. Are you bleeding?”
She blinked through the fog in her mind, her breath hitching as she looked up into his face. His hair was disheveled, a streak of soot smeared across his temple, but his eyes were wide with a frantic, desperate terror she had never seen in him before.
“I’m... I’m not hit,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “Just my head.”
May you like
Vincent let out a long, ragged exhale that sounded almost like a prayer. He didn't pull away. Instead, his thumb brushed softly against the faint red welt forming near her hairline, his touch unexpectedly tender, lingering for one breathless second too long.
“Good,” he whispered, his eyes dark with an emotion that made her chest ache. “Because this was just the greeting card.”
