Chapter 9 - The Final Reckoning
The tension snapped like a dry bone.
Russell’s eyes flickered from Julian to me, madness and betrayal tearing through his face. With a feral scream of rage, Russell swung the muzzle of his pistol away from me and aimed it directly at the center of Julian Vance’s chest.
"You son of a bitch!" Russell pulled the trigger.
*CRACK!*
The bullet caught Julian in the left shoulder, spinning the older man around with a grunt of pain. Julian’s silver-tipped cane clattered across the floor.
Instantly, Julian’s surviving South American mercenaries fired from behind the Escalades. A storm of automatic fire erupted across the warehouse floor.
"Move!" I shouted, dropping to the floor and rolling behind a massive steel shipping crate as rounds ricocheted off the iron with deafening metallic shrieks.
Silas returned fire with precision, his rifle barking in rapid, controlled pairs. One of the mercenaries went down, clutching his leg; another collapsed behind the front wheel of the SUV.
Russell was caught in the open crossfire.
Two rounds tore into Russell’s torso. He collapsed against the steel conference table, knocking the laptop to the floor. The screen cracked, flickering wildly in the red emergency light.
I leaned around the corner of the shipping container, leveled my SIG Sauer, and placed two rounds into the chest of the remaining mercenary who had Julian covered. The man dropped instantly.
Julian was on his knees near the center of the floor, his hand clutching his bleeding shoulder, his breath coming in ragged, bloody gasps. Even wounded, his eyes burned with demonic hatred.
He reached inside his cashmere coat with his good hand, pulling out a small, black detonator with an illuminated green arming switch.
"If I don't leave this pier with my empire, Vince," Julian snarled, his teeth stained with blood, "then Newark happens all over again. The entire foundation of this warehouse is rigged with four hundred pounds of commercial C-4. We all burn together!"
He raised his thumb to depress the trigger.
From ten feet away, a bloody hand lunged forward.
Russell Cade, dragging his shattered body across the concrete floor, lunged with the last ounce of strength in his dying frame. He clamped both hands around Julian’s wrist, slamming the detonator down against the hard floor.
"Russell!" Julian screamed, striking Russell across the face with his elbow.
Russell didn't let go. Blood poured from his mouth, but his teeth were bared in a savage, defiant grin.
"You said... battering rams get discarded..." Russell choked out, his fingers digging into Julian’s wrist with the desperate strength of a dying man. "You’re staying... in the fire with me, old man!"
"Let go of me, you fool!"
I broke from cover, sprinting across the open floor in three long strides.
I didn't draw my gun. I kicked Julian’s wrist with the steel toe of my boot.
The detonator flew out of his hand, skidding twenty feet across the wet concrete into the open water drainage grate, splashing harmlessly into the dark waves of Lake Michigan below.
Julian fell back against the pillar, defeated, clutching his shattered wrist and bleeding shoulder. The arrogance that had sustained him for seventy years evaporated, leaving only a broken, pathetic old criminal gasping for air in the Chicago cold.
I turned to Russell.
He had collapsed onto his back, his hands falling limp against his stomach. The dark blood pooling beneath him was arterial—deep, dark red, spreading fast across the cracked floor.
I dropped to my knees beside him.
I unclipped my tactical vest, ripped off my gloves, and pressed both hands firmly against the gaping wound in his chest. "Russell. Stay with me. Silas, call the tactical medical unit! Now!"
"Negative, Vince..." Silas’s voice came from behind the Escalade. "He’s hit in the subclavian. He has less than two minutes."
Russell looked up at me. His vision was already tunneling, his skin turning the color of wet ash.
He weakly raised his left hand—the hand wearing that heavy, silver Breitling watch. The crystal was shattered. The silver band was soaked in his own blood.
"Vince..." Russell whispered, blood bubbling on his lips. "I... I hated you because... because you were everything I couldn't be."
"Don't talk, Russ," I said, my voice cracking despite myself. "Save your breath."
"I was jealous, Vince," he rasped, tears cutting clean lines through the soot and blood on his cheeks. "From the very beginning... on the South Side. You had the heart... I just had the gun. I wanted to be the king... just once."
"You were my brother, Russell," I whispered, the weight of twenty-three years pressing down on my chest. "You were already the king. You didn't have to steal it."
Russell looked at me, a flicker of profound, devastating realization crossing his fading eyes. He let out a long, shuddering sigh.
"I'm sorry, brother..." he choked out. "Tell... tell the kid... the bad man... won't come back."
His eyes glazed over. His head rolled to the side.
The hand wearing the silver watch fell limp against the cold concrete.
Russell Cade was dead.
I knelt there in the pool of my best friend's blood for a long, silent minute, the storm howling outside the warehouse, the red emergency lights painting the final tragedy of my past.
Silas walked up quietly, standing at my shoulder. "Federal agents and Chicago tactical units are two minutes out, Vince. Julian’s foreign accounts have been frozen by the Department of Justice using the backdoor key we fed them."
I stood up slowly.
I looked down at Julian Vance, who was glaring up at me from the base of the pillar, clutching his bleeding arm, his face twisted in bitter defeat.
"You think you won, boy?" Julian spat, coughing up blood. "You think this makes you clean? You're a gangster's orphan. You’ll always be what I made you."
I reached inside my tactical vest. I pulled out the cheap, yellow plastic detective badge little Josie had given me.
I held it in my hand, looking at its ridiculous, bright plastic surface against the dark, bloodstained concrete of Pier 42.
"You didn't make me, Julian," I said calmly. "And you sure as hell don't own me anymore."
May you like
I turned my back on the ghost of Newark and walked toward the open bay doors as the blue and red flashing lights of the arriving authorities reflected across the dark waters of Lake Michigan.
***
