Chapter 8 - Fire and Ash
The gas hit Beckett’s lungs like liquid fire.
He coughed violently, his vision immediately tunneling as the sweet, chemical haze rolled across the Persian rugs.
Pierce fired three rounds through the thick glass of the security shutters, but the armored plating barely dented under the impact.
"Beckett! The service lift!" Pierce shouted through a ragged, hacking cough, pointing toward a small wooden door near the stone fireplace.
Julian raised his revolver, aiming through the smoke directly at Beckett’s chest.
Beckett didn't wait for his vision to clear.
He moved on pure, murderous instinct.
He threw his entire body weight forward, tackling Julian Vance around the waist just as the revolver discharged.
The bullet tore through the meat of Beckett’s left shoulder, a blinding jolt of heat that barely registered through the adrenaline surging in his veins.
Both men crashed hard against the stone hearth, scattering burning logs and glowing embers across the wooden floorboards.
Julian clawed at Beckett’s face, trying to keep the respirator sealed against his mouth.
Beckett grabbed the rubber straps of the mask and wrenched them backward with all the fury of a man who had already lost everything that mattered.
The mask tore free.
Julian inhaled a massive lungful of his own poison, his eyes widening in immediate, suffocating panic.
He began to thrash wildly, his fingers clawing at his throat as the neurotoxin paralyzed his diaphragm.
Beckett stood up slowly, swaying on his feet as his own lungs burned.
He picked up one of the burning pine logs from the scattered fire and looked down at Julian Vance, who was convulsing on the stone floor.
"She was too good for this world," Beckett rasped, his voice shredded by the smoke.
"And she was far too good for you."
Beckett dropped the burning log onto the heavy velvet drapes hanging beside the bookshelf.
The dry fabric caught instantly, a sheet of orange flame roaring up toward the timber ceiling.
"Boss! We have to go!" Pierce yelled, pulling the service door open and coughing blood into his sleeve.
Beckett turned his back on Julian Vance and stumbled through the narrow service entrance into the dark, stone utility corridor behind the kitchen.
They tumbled out into the freezing mountain rain just as the second-story windows of the lodge blew outward in a massive fireball of exploding gas and timber.
The heat of the explosion washed over Beckett’s back as he fell onto his knees in the mud.
His men were already regrouping, securing the surviving Vance guards who had thrown down their weapons the moment the lodge began to burn.
Pierce collapsed beside him, leaning against the front bumper of an SUV, his chest heaving as he gulped the clean, freezing mountain air.
The great lodge of Julian Vance was an inferno against the black sky, a funeral pyre for a rivalry that had lasted a decade and ended in twenty minutes.
Beckett looked down at his trembling hands.
They were covered in soot, rain, and his own blood from his wounded shoulder.
He had survived.
The feds would find Julian’s charred remains, the forged ledgers, and enough evidence to close their investigation permanently.
Beckett was safe.
His empire was secure.
His money was untouched.
And he was the loneliest, most pathetic man alive on God’s green earth.
"Pierce," Beckett said quietly, not looking up from the mud.
"She’s in Savannah," Pierce whispered through a ragged cough.
Beckett’s head snapped toward his lieutenant.
"What?"
"She bought a small cottage on the salt marshes outside Savannah four months ago," Pierce said, pulling a brass key from his pocket and pressing it into Beckett’s bloody hand.
"She used her mother’s maiden name: Campbell."
"She took the morning flight out of Plattsburgh."
"She lands in Georgia at nine o'clock."
Beckett stared at the small brass key in his palm, his chest aching with a pain far worse than the bullet wound in his shoulder.
"Why are you telling me this?" Beckett asked.
"She told you to keep it from me."
"Because I know her," Pierce said, looking at the burning lodge.
"She set you free, Beckett."
"She gave you your life back."
"She gave you every opportunity to stay in your castle, count your money, and live the rest of your days as the king of this miserable city."
Pierce met Beckett’s eyes, his expression dead serious.
"If you go to Savannah as Beckett Shaw, the mafia boss, she will shut the door in your face."
"She will vanish again, and this time, you will never find her."
"The only way you ever see that woman again is if you leave the crown in the ashes."
"Can you do that, Beckett?"
"Can you walk away from the only thing you’ve ever known how to be?"
Beckett stood up slowly, the rain washing the blood and soot from his face.
He looked back at the six black SUVs, at the thirty armed soldiers awaiting his command, at the city waiting for him three hours south where he was the undisputed master of every street, every dock, and every precinct.
He reached up to his shoulder, unbuckled the heavy leather holster, and let his custom .45 fall into the mud.
He pulled his encrypted phone from his coat, dropped it into the puddle, and crushed it beneath the heel of his boot.
"Pierce," Beckett said softly.
"Take the city."
"Take the docks, take the territory, take the money."
"It's all yours."
"Boss—" Pierce began, his voice catching in his throat.
May you like
"I am not your boss anymore," Beckett said, turning his back on the burning ruins of Julian Vance’s empire and walking toward the only surviving civilian truck parked near the tree line.
"I am just a man who has to go apologize to his wife."
