Chapter 8 - The Shadow of Pier 42
They did not stay at the cabin.
Within thirty minutes, Damon had bandaged Marcus’s shoulder with field sutures and loaded what weapons remained into the bed of a secondary utility vehicle hidden in the ravine.
By 5:00 AM, they were forty miles away, parked beneath the rusted iron arches of an abandoned railroad bridge overlooking the industrial sprawl of the city harbor.
Below them lay Pier 42.
Through Damon’s binoculars, the docks were alive with frantic, illicit activity. Heavy cranes were loading unmarked shipping containers onto a panamanian-flagged freighter named *The Leviathan*. Floodlights cut through the sea mist, illuminating armed men in tactical jackets patrolling the perimeter.
And standing near the gangplank, surrounded by bodyguards, were two men Damon knew intimately.
Nikolai Vance, tall, aristocratic, wearing a camel-hair coat over his tailored suit, checking his gold pocket watch.
And beside him stood Cassian Drake, Damon’s former capo, laughing nervously as he smoked a cigarette, clutching a leather briefcase handcuffed to his wrist.
“They’re liquidating,” Marcus said from the passenger seat, his face pale from blood loss but his eyes sharp as flint. “The Tucson diversion wasn't just drugs, Damon. It was your entire offshore treasury bearer bonds. Malcolm had the codes in his safe, but Drake knew the master override.”
“Drake didn't just want my territory,” Damon said, lowering the binoculars. “He wanted to buy Vance’s protection with my own money and vanish to South America before the syndicates could reorganize.”
In the back seat of the truck, Selena sat holding Ruby, who was sleeping curled against her mother's lap, wrapped in Damon’s dry trench coat.
Selena looked at Damon through the rearview mirror. Her hazel eyes were clear, fierce, and entirely devoid of fear.
“What happens now?” she asked.
“Now,” Damon said, turning to look at her, “I finish it.”
“Not alone,” Selena said immediately.
“Selena, you stay in this truck with Marcus. If I am not back by the time the ship’s horn sounds three times, Marcus drives you to the Canadian border. There is an account in Montreal under your name with enough money to ensure Ruby never has to work a day in her life.”
Selena leaned forward, her hand reaching over the seat to grab Damon’s collar. She pulled him toward her until their foreheads were almost touching, her eyes blazing with an intensity that took his breath away.
“Listen to me, Damon Mercer,” she whispered, her voice shaking with passion. “I didn't run through the desert, I didn't hide in your house for a year, and I didn't watch my daughter walk into a room of wolves just to take your money and run away to Canada.”
Damon stared at her, stunned.
“You told me we were under your blood oath,” she said, tears glistening in her eyes. “Well, you’re under mine too. You don't get to go down there and die like a martyr. You come back to us. Because if you don't... Ruby will spend the rest of her life looking for the man who left crackers in her drawer, and I will spend the rest of mine looking for the only man who ever saw me as an equal.”
Damon felt a lump form in his throat—a sensation so foreign to his cold, calculating mind that it felt like an injury.
He reached up, covering her hand where it held his collar. He kissed her palm, hard and deliberate.
“I’m coming back,” he swore. “I’m going to end them, Selena. And then I’m going to take you and Ruby home.”
“How are you going to get past forty armed men on that dock, boss?” Marcus asked quietly, gesturing toward the floodlit perimeter below. “Even with your iron will, the math doesn't work.”
Damon’s lips curved into a dark, terrible smile.
“Because Drake thinks like an accountant,” Damon said. “He thinks because he blew up my house and sent a hit squad to the woods, I’m dead or crawling on my knees.”
He picked up the encrypted satellite radio from the dashboard and dialed a frequency he hadn't used in ten years.
The line clicked.
*“Mercer?”* a gravelly voice answered from the receiver.
“Silas,” Damon said smoothly. “This is Damon.”
A sharp intake of breath on the other end. *“The news says you were vaporized in your driveway, Damon. Vance announced he was absorbing the eastern territories at midnight.”*
“Vance lied,” Damon replied. “I have Cassian Drake, Nikolai Vance, and eighty million in syndicate bearer bonds sitting at Pier 42. They board *The Leviathan* in forty minutes.”
Silence hung on the line. Then Silas—the oldest, most ruthless don of the southern coalition—spoke with chilled gravity: *“What do you want, Damon?”*
“I want the harbor sealed,” Damon said. “Bring sixty men and surround the rail yards. Nobody leaves the pier. But Vance and Drake... belong to me.”
*“And what do we get?”*
“You get the eastern shipping lanes,” Damon said, his voice ringing with absolute, unyielding authority. “I am stepping down from the syndicate council today.”
Marcus turned his head sharply, staring at Damon in disbelief. Selena gasped softly.
*“You’re walking away?”* Silas asked, his voice filled with shock. *“The Mercer empire?”*
May you like
“The empire is over,” Damon said, his eyes meeting Selena’s in the mirror. “I’ve found something worth keeping.”
***