Chapter 7 - Reckoning at Midnight
"Wait—don't shoot!" Vance stammered, panic finally cracking his cool corporate facade as he swung the barrel of his Walther back toward Claire. "We can make a deal! Half of my shares in Vanguard! Offshore accounts in Zurich! You name the price, we—"
He didn't finish the sentence.
I didn't wait for him to negotiate. Years of dealing with corporate backstabbers had taught me that a cornered rat only bites when given the option to speak. I raised the heavy Benelli and fired a single round directly into the marble pillar inches to the left of Vance’s head.
The deafening concussion of the blast echoed down the hall, sending a shower of marble splinters across his tailored suit. Vance flinched violently, his finger spasming on the trigger of his pistol, sending a wild round crashing harmlessly into the ceiling plaster.
Before he could recover his aim, Claire moved.
She didn't use a gun. She closed the distance between them with terrifying speed, ducking beneath his arc of fire, and drove the heel of her palm upward into the base of Vance’s chin with bone-crushing force.
Vance gasped, dropping his pistol as his knees buckled.
Claire caught him by the lapels of his expensive suit, hoisted him off the floor with a surge of cold, restrained fury, and drove him backward against the wrought-iron railing of the grand staircase, suspending him ten feet above the marble foyer below.
"This is for my team," Claire whispered, her voice lethal and low. "And this is for every innocent life your board traded for a balance sheet."
She didn't drop him. Instead, she held him there, trembling and weeping with terror, suspended over the drop, until I stepped up beside her and placed a hand gently over hers.
"Hold on, Claire," I said quietly.
She paused, her ice-blue eyes flashing sideways to meet mine. The rage burning behind them was fierce, but beneath it lay the heavy, exhausted grief of a woman who had carried a dead world on her shoulders for three agonizing years.
"If you drop him over that railing, he dies too easily," I said, my voice cold as ice. "And the federal indictments I’m going to hand to the DOJ tomorrow morning need a living, breathing witness to sign away every single asset Vanguard owns."
Claire stared at me for a long, tense moment. Then, slowly, a grim, humorless smile touched her lips.
"You really are a businessman at heart, Victor," she murmured.
With a contemptuous flick of her wrists, she hurled Marcus Vance backward onto the hardwood floor of the landing like a sack of garbage. Vance groaned, clutching his bruised ribs and gasping for air, completely broken, physically and mentally.
I pulled a pair of heavy-duty flex-cuffs from my tactical vest, knelt over the corporate titan, and zip-tied his hands behind his back with clinical efficiency.
"Miller’s unconscious in the kitchen, Vance's strike team is neutralized, and federal investigators are about to receive an encrypted data drive containing every offshore transaction your syndicate made over the past five years," I said, standing up and dusting off my knees. "Enjoy your corporate liquidation, Marcus. You're going to spend the rest of your natural life in a supermax federal penitentiary."
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Vance glared up at me with venomous hatred, but he didn't speak. He knew he had lost.
As the wailing sirens of the Chicago Police Department and federal task force units finally began to wail through the pouring rain outside the gates of Ashford House, the heavy weight of the night seemed to lift just a fraction, washing away the blood, the betrayal, and the ghosts of the past.
