Chapter 6 - The Broken Covenant
The impact sounded like a bomb detonating between the limestone canyons of Foley Square.
The Sprinter van buckled inward, its rear axle snapping with a deafening screech as it was launched six feet across the sidewalk, smashing through the heavy glass facade of a commercial bank. The two men near the vestibule were thrown into the air like ragdolls, their weapons clattering against the concrete.
Before the smoke could clear, my driver’s door flew open.
I raised the HK416, acquiring targets with the mechanical detachment of a soldier.
The first operative tried to roll to his knees, raising an MPX submachine gun. Two controlled bursts to his center mass put him down permanently. The second man scrambled for the lobby doors; a single round through his right thigh dropped him screaming onto the shattered glass.
I didn't stop to interrogate them.
I kicked through the splintered security door of Maya’s building, bypassed the disabled elevators, and took the concrete fire stairs three at a time. The air in the stairwell smelled of burnt cordite and commercial breaching compound.
On the third floor, Maya’s outer office was in ruins. Her reception desk was shredded with automatic fire; her two security guards lay unconscious near the water cooler, zip-tied and bleeding from blunt-force trauma, but breathing.
At the end of the long hallway, three heavily armed men were attaching a linear shaped charge to the frame of the reinforced vault door.
"Down!" I roared.
The man holding the detonator turned toward me.
The HK416 barked three times. The hallway erupted into an inferno of muzzle flashes and ricochets. The first man dropped instantly. The other two scrambled behind marble display pedestals, returning fire with short, frantic bursts that chewed the plaster above my head into white powder.
I dropped behind an antique credenza, leaned around the corner, and fired through the drywall where I knew their flank was exposed. The high-velocity rounds punched clean through the lath and plaster. A choked scream followed, then the heavy thump of a body hitting the floorboards.
The last man—a towering mercenary with a scarred neck—dropped his empty rifle, drew a combat blade, and lunged across the narrow corridor with reckless fury.
He was fast, but he was operating on panic. I stepped inside his guard, caught his knife wrist, and drove the butt of my rifle directly into his nose with the full rotational force of my hips. Bone gave way. He staggered backward, his blade clattering to the floor, before my second strike took his legs out from under him.
Within forty seconds, the hallway was dead silent save for the dripping of the overhead fire sprinklers and the groans of the wounded.
I stepped to the scorched steel door and pounded four times with my fist. "Maya! It’s Adrian. It’s over."
A heavy mechanical bolt slid back.
The door swung inward three inches, revealing Maya’s pale, sweat-streaked face. She was holding a 9mm Glock in both hands, her forearms trembling with the adrenaline of a woman who had prepared to fight to the last bullet.
Behind her, seated on an iron safe beneath a row of legal file boxes, was Lily.
She was still wearing her moon-print pajamas. Her stuffed rabbit was tucked firmly beneath her chin. When she saw me standing in the smoke-filled doorway, her small face didn't crumple into tears.
Instead, a tiny, fragile breath escaped her lips.
"You came," she said.
I dropped the rifle, fell to my knees on the damp carpet, and pulled her into my arms.
I didn't care about the blood on my sleeves, the gunpowder burning my lungs, or the sirens beginning to wail three blocks away as the New York Police Department finally penetrated the traffic gridlock.
Lily wrapped her small arms around my neck, burying her face into the curve of my collarbone.
"I told the bad men my daddy was coming," she whispered into my ear. "I told them you were going to fix it."
"I am," I choked out, my eyes stinging with tears I hadn't shed in thirty years. "I'm fixing everything right now."
Maya lowered her weapon, leaning heavily against the steel frame of the safe room. She wiped blood from a small cut on her temple and looked down at the dead men in the hallway.
"Salvatore Romano sent his personal strike team," Maya said, her voice shaking with rage. "He’s crossed the Rubicon, Adrian. He knows this isn't just about paternity. If Lily lives, the Romano-Moretti merger is null and void under the ancestral bylaws your father drafted. The entire logistics corridor reverts to her name."
"Where is Salvatore right now?" I asked, standing up with Lily firmly balanced on my hip. Her small arms locked around my neck like an anchor.
"The Pierre Hotel," Maya said, glancing at her watch. "The annual Metropolitan Maritime Gala. Every federal judge, district attorney, and shipping magnate on the East Coast is there. He’s hosting the main table. He thinks this strike was successful. He thinks Vincent has you contained at the townhouse."
I looked down at Lily. Her eyes were wide, clear, and utterly trusting.
May you like
"Get your briefcase, Maya," I said, stepping over the broken glass toward the stairs. "We’re going to a party."
***
