Chapter 4 - The Art of the Counter-Strike
The rain beat a relentless tattoo against the metal roof of Tommy Delgado’s apartment above the bait shop.
When Tommy opened the door, wearing a stained undershirt and holding a heavy wrench in his right hand, his eyes widened in sheer disbelief. He lowered the wrench slowly, his mouth hanging open as he stared at the man standing in the dim hallway light.
“Holy Mother of God,” Tommy whispered, crossing himself. “Adrian? They... they buried you this morning.”
“The casket was expensive, Tommy, but the ventilation was terrible,” Adrian said grimly, stepping past him into the cramped, tobacco-scented apartment.
Claire followed closely behind, closing the door and locking the deadbolt.
It took twenty minutes of pacing, explaining, and showing Tommy the chemical burn scars on Adrian’s wrist from the hospital IV before the old union boss finally accepted the impossible truth.
“That son of a bitch Marcus,” Tommy hissed, slamming his heavy fist against the kitchen table so hard the coffee mugs rattled. “I told your old man twenty years ago that boy had the eyes of a shark. He smiles like a priest and steals like a pirate.”
“I don't need eulogies, Tommy. I need intelligence,” Adrian said, leaning over the table. “Marcus and Elena are liquidating my personal accounts and pushing through a corporate merger with Sterling Dynamics. If they finalize the transfer by Wednesday, I won't just be legally dead—I’ll be financially erased.”
Tommy pulled a worn leather ledger from his back pocket and tossed it onto the table.
“You think Marcus is running this alone?” Tommy asked grimly. “Think again, Adrian. Two weeks before your ‘accident,’ a private courier delivered three shipping containers marked Medical Supplies to Berth 9. They bypassed customs inspection entirely under an executive override signed by your wife.”
Adrian’s breath hitched. “Medical supplies? We don't import medical supplies.”
“Exactly,” Tommy nodded. “I asked one of my boys on the night shift to check the manifest. Those containers weren'ms holding syringes or gauze. They were loaded with high-grade European surveillance gear, offshore server racks, and counterfeit bearer bonds totaling over fifty million dollars.”
Claire leaned over the ledger, her nursing background kicking in instantly. “Fifty million in bearer bonds? That’s not a corporate merger, Adrian. That’s an exit strategy. They were planning to loot the company treasury and flee the country the moment you were out of the way.”
“And my death was the insurance policy,” Adrian said, his voice dropping into a lethal, quiet register. He looked at Tommy. “I need access to the private security cameras at Berth 9. Not the corporate cloud feed—the hardline backup server in the sub-basement.”
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“That server is locked behind biometric security,” Tommy warned. “Only Marcus and your head of security have the retinal keys.”
“Then it’s a good thing,” Adrian said, a cold, dangerous smile touching his lips, “that Marcus still uses the same security override code we programmed into the system when we were twenty-one years old.”
