Chapter 18 - The Reckoning at Charlestown
The abandoned shipyard at Charlestown smelled of rust, stagnant harbor water, and rain.
Dante was bound to a heavy steel pillar inside the cavernous dry-dock warehouse, his hands zip-tied behind his back, blood dripping from a gash on his forehead where Victor’s men had struck him with a rifle butt.
Victor Vance stood ten feet away under the flickering halogen lights, carefully inspecting the nickel-plated Beretta he had confiscated from Dante's coat.
"You really thought Elena outsmarted you six months ago, didn't you, Dante?" Victor asked, chuckling softly as he shook his head. "You thought she ran because she hated your violence. Because she wanted to protect the baby."
Dante glared through swollen eyes, his breathing shallow. "She did run to protect him. From monsters like you."
"She ran because I told her you killed her father," Victor revealed casually, stepping closer until his polished wingtip shoes touched Dante’s boots. "I forged the wire transfers from your secret accounts to the hit squad that took out old man Vance on Route 127. I planted the shell casings from your signature caliber. I made her believe that the man sharing her bed was the man who murdered her family."
A roar of primal fury ripped from Dante's throat as he strained against the steel bindings, the plastic zip-ties cutting deep into his wrists until blood welled up.
"You bastard!" Dante snarled. "She spent six months living in agony thinking I was a monster!"
"And it worked brilliantly," Victor said smoothly, tapping the gun barrel against Dante's cheek. "She stole the ledger from your safe to avenge him. She thought she was winning her freedom. But all she did was carry the keys directly to where I could pluck them from her hands."
Victor turned toward the warehouse bay doors, which slowly began to grind open, letting in the howl of the ocean storm.
A black SUV drove through the doors, stopping thirty feet away.
The driver’s door opened, and Elena stepped out into the glare of the warehouse lights. She wasn't carrying Leo. Her trench coat was pulled tight around her waist, her posture straight, her eyes blazing with an icy, lethal focus.
In her right hand, she held a sleek, military-grade detonator.
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"Let him go, Victor," Elena called out, her voice echoing off the corrugated metal walls with the authority of an empress. "Or the server bank containing every single asset you own across four continents turns into ash in five seconds."
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