Chapter 6 - The Shadows Strike
The rain had washed the grit of the city streets into the storm drains by 4:45 AM, leaving the pavement glistening like black obsidian under the amber halogen streetlights.
Julian Voss sat on the twenty-second floor of the Voss Financial Tower, sipping forty-year-old Scotch from a crystal tumbler, his wingtip shoes resting comfortably on the corner of his glass desk.
Beside him, two of his top capos were reviewing property deeds and maritime manifests that had been recovered from the southern railyards.
“The Romano girl is dead by now,” Voss said smoothly, adjusting the gold cufflinks at his wrists. “Without her keeping the dock workers pacified, Ethan will have to send enforcers to every terminal. He’ll be overextended. When he strikes out, we take the warehouses.”
The lights in the office flickered once.
Then, with a dull, low thud that vibrated through the floorboards, the entire skyscraper plunged into absolute darkness.
“Generator backup?” Voss snapped, setting his glass down with a sharp click. “What happened to the emergency feed?”
“Sir,” one of the capos muttered, peering out through the floor-to-ceiling glass wall toward the atrium. “The security board downstairs just went red. All thirty-two feeds.”
A heavy, metallic thud echoed from the private express elevator at the end of the hall.
The steel doors, rated to withstand explosive breaches, groaned under tremendous hydraulic pressure. A crowbar jammed through the seam, followed by a pair of massive gloved hands that peeled the heavy steel doors open with a shriek of tearing metal.
Ethan Romano stepped into the penthouse.
He carried no tactical gear. He wore no body armor. He was still dressed in the blood-stained dress shirt and the torn overcoat from the hospital. In his right hand, he held a heavy, customized twelve-gauge tactical shotgun; in his left, a single red folder.
The two capos drew their weapons instantly.
Ethan fired twice without looking.
The roar of the shotgun in the enclosed office was deafening. The first capo was blown backward through the glass partition into the conference room; the second took a blast to the torso that pinned him against the concrete pillar.
Julian Voss scrambled out of his leather chair, his hands fumbling inside his desk drawer for his silver-plated 1911 pistol.
Before his fingers could touch the grip, the barrel of Ethan’s shotgun came down on his hand, shattering the delicate bones against the mahogany edge.
Voss screamed, falling to his knees on the Persian rug, clutching his crushed fingers to his chest, staring up at Ethan with eyes wide with sheer, unadulterated terror.
“Ethan—wait! Wait!” Voss choked out, spitting saliva. “It’s business! It was just business! The Romano family took thirty percent of my maritime contracts last winter—we were balancing the books!”
Ethan didn't speak. He stepped around the desk, his boots crunching over the shattered crystal tumbler, and dropped the red folder onto Voss’s lap.
Voss looked down with trembling eyes. “What... what is this?”
“It’s your daughter’s medical file,” Ethan said, his voice flat, devoid of human inflection. “St. Jude’s Pediatric Pavilion. Room 314. Acute lymphoblastic leukemia.”
Voss’s face drained of every drop of color. “No... no, please. Leave Maya out of this. She’s eight years old, Ethan. Please. Take everything. Take the company!”
“Do you know who paid for her experimental CAR-T cell therapy when your shell corporation was frozen by the federal district court six months ago?” Ethan asked quietly.
Voss shook his head slowly, his jaw hanging loose in confusion and rising horror.
“Clare did,” Ethan said.
The silence that followed was suffocating.
“She saw the billing request come through the foundation’s charity wing,” Ethan continued, his thumb gently resting on the shotgun’s hammer. “She knew you were my rival. She knew you were positioning your ships to strangle our supply lines. And she approved the two-million-dollar wire anyway. She wrote a note in the margins: *‘A child shouldn't pay for the sins of her father’s boardroom.’*”
Voss began to weep, his shoulders heaving, his forehead pressing against the bloody Persian rug. “I didn't know... God, Ethan, I didn't know...”
“I know you didn't,” Ethan said softly, stepping backward toward the shattered glass wall that overlooked the waking city. “Because she never told anyone. She just absorbed the blows, cleaned the blood off the floor, and let the men who hated me survive so that I wouldn't have to carry more ghosts.”
Ethan raised the weapon.
“You sent three killers to murder her in her hospital bed while her heart was stopped.”
“Ethan, please!” Voss screamed, curling into a ball.
“I won't touch your daughter,” Ethan said, his finger tightening on the trigger. “Because Clare would never forgive me if I did. But you... you don't get to breathe the same air she does.”
A single shot lit the dark office with a flash of orange fire.
May you like
When the smoke cleared, Ethan Romano dropped the spent weapon onto the floor, turned his back on the corpse of his rival, and walked back into the rain.
***