Chapter 4 - The Salt on the Docks
The pier at the end of 14th Street was silent, save for the rhythmic sloshing of icy black water against the creaking wooden pilings and the howling Atlantic wind.
A single, rusted van was parked near the edge of the pier, its headlights illuminating the falling snow. Bound to a wooden chair in the middle of the open clearing, stripped down to his undershirt and jeans, was Thomas Miller.
His face was bruised, his nose broken, and his hands tied tightly behind his back with industrial zip-ties. He was shivering violently, his teeth clicking together like castanets in the freezing wind.
Three armored black SUVs pulled onto the pier, their high beams cutting through the white haze, blinding Thomas as they surrounded him in a semi-circle.
The driver’s side door of the center vehicle opened, and Elias Vance stepped out into the blizzard.
Knox walked beside him, carrying a heavy leather briefcase. Six armed Vance enforcers fanned out around the perimeter, their suppressed submachine guns pointed toward the darkness, ensuring no unwanted guests from Brighton Beach were lurking nearby.
Thomas squinted through the blinding lights, wiping blood from his mouth with his shoulder.
“Vance!” Thomas screamed, his voice cracking with a pathetic, desperate pitch. “Vance! You can’t do this to me! I’m a citizen! I’m going to call the cops!”
Elias walked slowly across the ice, stopping three feet in front of Thomas. He pulled a silver cigarette case from his pocket, lit a clove cigarette, and took a slow, deliberate drag, the red ember glowing brightly in the dark.
“You’re going to call the cops, Thomas?” Elias asked smoothly, blowing a cloud of gray smoke into the freezing air. “On what charge? Unlawful detention?”
“You kidnapped my wife!” Thomas yelled, his chest heaving as he tried to pull against the zip-ties. “You stole my daughters! They’re MY property! You had no right to take them!”
Elias took another drag of his cigarette. He didn't look angry. He looked at Thomas the way a scientist might look at a rat in a laboratory.
“Property,” Elias repeated softly. “Is that what you called them when you dragged Ava down two flights of concrete stairs three hours after she gave birth?”
Thomas flinched, his eyes darting nervously toward the water. “She... she disobeyed me! She failed to give me an heir! I spent five thousand dollars on midwives and fertility treatments, and she gave me two useless, sniveling girls! She humiliated me in front of my family!”
Knox stepped forward, his knuckles turning white as he gripped his sidearm, but Elias raised a single hand, holding his enforcer back.
“You left them under the Hudson overpass,” Elias said, his tone entirely conversational. “The temperature was eighteen degrees. The wind chill was six. If I had arrived four minutes later, Ava’s core temperature would have dropped below eighty degrees. Her heart would have stopped.”
“She’s tough!” Thomas sneered, spitting blood onto the ice. “She’s a gutter rat! She would have survived! But you... you had to interfere! You took them to your penthouse because you wanted to play the hero! Well, guess what, Vance? Nikolai Volkov knows! He knows you have them! If you don't give me two million dollars right now, Volkov’s men are going to burn your building to the ground!”
Elias stared at Thomas for a long, agonizing silence.
Then, Elias leaned forward, tossing the butt of his cigarette onto Thomas’s bare knee.
Thomas shrieked in pain as the hot ember burned through his skin.
“Volkov isn't coming, Thomas,” Elias whispered.
Thomas’s screams died in his throat. He looked up, terror finally beginning to overpower his arrogance. “W-What?”
Elias gestured toward Knox. Knox opened the heavy leather briefcase, walked over to Thomas, and turned it upside down.
A rain of bloody, severed leather patches fell onto the snow at Thomas’s feet—each patch bearing the embroidered crest of the Volkov syndicate.
“I visited Volkov’s lieutenant in Brighton Beach two hours ago,” Elias said calmly, pulling leather gloves onto his hands. “I explained to him that Thomas Miller tried to use the Bratva’s name to extort the Vance family. Volkov was very understanding. He gave me permission to handle you however I saw fit... in exchange for erasing his own gambling debts to my casinos.”
Thomas’s face went entirely, ghost-white. The air left his lungs in a ragged gasp.
“No...” Thomas whimpered. “No, no, no... Nikolai wouldn't... he promised me—”
“You sold your wife for three hundred thousand dollars,” Elias cut him off, stepping closer until his shadow completely swallowed Thomas’s trembling body. “You sold your newborn daughters for a chance to clear your name with a Russian mobster. You thought you were a predator, Thomas. But in this city, you are nothing more than fuel for the furnace.”
Elias looked at Knox.
“Break his knees,” Elias commanded softly. “Then put him in a shipping container on the vessel bound for South Africa. Let him work off his three-hundred-thousand-dollar debt in the diamond mines for the next forty years.”
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“NO! PLEASE! ELIAS! FORGIVE ME!” Thomas wailed, his hysterical screams bouncing off the cold steel shipping containers as Knox grabbed a heavy steel crowbar from the trunk of the SUV. “AVA! TELL HER I’M SORRY! AVA!”
Elias turned his back on the screaming man, walking calmly toward his vehicle without a single backward glance.
