Chapter 19 - The Final Echo
Dante broke through the smoke on the lower floor, firing a burst that dropped one of the bodyguards on the catwalk, but a ricochet struck Dante in the leg, sending him tumbling behind a forklift with a stifled roar of pain.
Dominic didn't flinch. He pulled the pin on the flashbang, banked it off the steel staircase railing, and sent it arcing directly into the mezzanine office.
*BANG.*
A blinding flash of white light and a concussive shockwave shattered the remaining glass. Lucian screamed, dropping the detonator as he clutched his ruptured eardrums.
Dominic bolted up the iron stairs three steps at a time. The remaining bodyguard stumbled blindly out of the doorway, raising his sidearm, but Dominic caught his wrist, snapped the bone backward, drove a combat knife beneath the man's ribcage, and hurled his lifeless body over the railing to the concrete forty feet below.
Dominic stepped into the shattered office.
Lucian was crawling across the blood-slicked hardwood floor, his face covered in soot, dragging himself toward a fallen revolver.
Dominic stepped heavily onto Lucian’s outstretched hand, crushing the bones beneath the sole of his boot.
Lucian shrieked in agony, rolling onto his back, staring up into the face of his executioner.
Dominic looked down at him. His breath was steady. His gray eyes were entirely devoid of humanity—two pools of arctic ice staring into the soul of the man who had dared to threaten his child. Dominic raised the P226, the black muzzle resting directly against the bridge of Lucian’s nose.
"Wait... wait!" Lucian pleaded, coughing blood, his hands clawing at Dominic’s boot. "You kill me, you kill them!"
Dominic paused, his finger resting lightly on the trigger. "My family is in a fortress, Lucian. Your men on the cliff are dead."
A grotesque, bloody smile spread across Lucian’s lips. It was the smile of a condemned man who had already laid his trap.
"Not those men, you arrogant bastard," Lucian wheezed, laughing weakly as blood bubbled from his mouth. "You think I only hired one team? You think I didn't know who Sheriff Walker was? Who do you think financed his election four years ago?"
The world seemed to stop spinning. The hum of the rain outside, the groans of the wounded men on the warehouse floor—everything faded into an icy, ringing void in Dominic’s ears.
"Tom Walker was my father's creature before you ever set foot in that miserable cove," Lucian whispered, his eyes gleaming with malicious triumph. "The moment you left town... the moment you drove onto that highway... Walker got the call. They aren't in a cell, Dominic. They’re on a boat heading out into international waters right now."
Dominic’s heart seized. A cold terror—worse than any bullet, worse than any knife—sliced through his soul.
"You're lying," Dominic whispered.
"Check your pocket," Lucian choked out, grinning through his teeth. "The radio you took from my scout. Channel 4."
Dominic’s left hand slowly reached down to his tactical vest, pulling out the stolen military radio. He clicked the dial to Channel 4.
Static hissed. Then, through the small speaker, cutting clearly through the gunfire and the rain, came a voice.
It was Sheriff Walker’s voice, cold and detached:
*"Package secured. We are three miles past the lighthouse reef. The boy is asking for his father. What are our orders for disposal?"*
Then, a small, terrified voice broke through the background of the transmission—so faint, so desperately clear:
*"Dad? Dad, the ironclad broke... where are you—"*
The transmission cut out into flat, buzzing static.
May you like
Lucian burst into hysterical laughter on the floor. "Shoot me, Dominic! Kill me! But you'll never reach the open sea in time!"
Dominic stood frozen beneath the flickering emergency lights, the gun heavy in his hand, his soul hanging over the edge of the abyss, while three hundred miles away, in the pitch-black waters of the Atlantic storm, his son’s voice vanished into the dark...
