Chapter 3 - Blood Ties and the Ledger of Sins
The room tilted. Claire’s hands went completely numb, the silver forceps
slipping from her grip and clattering against the hardwood floor.
“No,” she whispered, the word barely a breath. “No, no, no. Rebecca doesn’t know
anything. She’s an art student. She has nothing to do with this!”
Damian was on his feet in an instant, ignoring the agony in his stitched
shoulder. The vulnerability from moments before had vanished, replaced by the
terrifying, cold calculation of a mafia kingpin preparing for war. He crossed
the room, grabbed Claire by her upper arms, and forced her to look at him.
“Look at me, Claire. Look at me!” he commanded, his voice slicing through her
spiraling panic.
Tears spilled hot over her lashes, blurring the sight of his fierce, unyielding
features. “Damian, please... Rebecca is all I have. When our parents died in
that car crash six years ago, I swore I’d protect her. That’s why I took your
job! The money... it was all for her tuition, her apartment, keeping her safe
from—”
“Listen to me,” Damian cut in, his grip firm, grounding her against the tidal
wave of hysteria. “Mercer took her because he knows you’re my weakness.”
Claire blinked, stunned into silence by the admission. “Your... what?”
Damian’s jaw tightened. He didn’t look away. “You think I didn’t notice you
sitting in that clinic for seven hundred days, Claire? You think I let just
anyone patch up my men, stitch bullet wounds without filing police reports, and
walk out of my building with full clearance? I’ve had a shadow detail on you
since the day you signed your contract.”
Claire pulled back, shock warring with betrayal. “You stalked me?”
“I protected you,” Damian corrected, his voice a low growl. “And by extension, I
protected your sister. But Dominic Mercer has been digging into my operations
for six months. He realized that the only person in my entire organization who
doesn't carry a gun, who doesn't owe me money, and whom I would tear this city
apart to keep breathing... is you.”
Before Claire could process the terrifying weight of his words, her personal
cell phone vibrated violently against the mahogany desk.
It was an unknown number. A video call request.
Damian reached out, tapped the screen to answer, and patched the video feed
directly to the massive wall monitor above the fireplace, while keeping the
phone’s front-facing camera covered with his thumb.
The screen flickered to life.
Claire choked back a scream.
Rebecca was tied to a rusted metal support pillar in what looked like an
abandoned refrigeration warehouse. Her blonde hair was matted with sweat, her
face bruised, a split lip weeping blood onto her oversized gray hoodie.
Behind her stood Dominic Mercer, a fifty-year-old psychopath with slicked-back
silver hair, tailored Italian wool, and the dead, vacant eyes of a shark. In his
right hand, Mercer held a heavy tactical knife, resting the flat of the cold
steel against Rebecca’s throat.
“Good evening, Damian,” Mercer’s voice oozed through the high-definition
speakers, smug and venomous. “I assume you survived my little fireworks display
at the Harbor Crown? You always were hard to kill. Must be that thick skull of
yours.”
Damian stepped in front of the camera, his expression completely devoid of human
emotion. “Mercer. You have five minutes to walk away from that girl before I
make your death a multi-day event.”
Mercer laughed, a grating, wet sound. “Tough talk for a man bleeding through his
bandages. But you don’t hold the cards anymore, Cross. The little nurse’s sister
made a fatal mistake. Did you know she’s been frequenting my private underground
club on Essex Street?”
Claire gasped, her eyes flying wide. “What?”
“Oh, she didn’t tell you, Claire?” Mercer smirked into the lens, knowing Claire
was watching. “Little Rebecca got into a bit of debt at my high-stakes tables.
Forty grand. And when she couldn’t pay, she offered to do a little favor for me.
She offered to swipe a keycard from your purse. The keycard that opens Damian’s
private executive suite.”
Claire felt the floor drop out from beneath her reality. She looked at Damian,
horrified. “Damian, I swear... I didn’t know. I never gave her—”
“I know,” Damian said quietly, not taking his eyes off the screen.
“Here’s the deal, Cross,” Mercer’s voice hardened into steel. “The Boston Port
Authority is voting on the waterfront shipping terminal lease tomorrow morning.
You’re going to withdraw your bid. You’re going to sign over the South Boston
container docks to my syndicate. And then... you’re going to bring Claire
Bennett to the Old Point Pier at dawn. Alone.”
“And if I don’t?” Damian asked softly.
Mercer pressed the knife edge slightly deeper into Rebecca’s skin. A thin bead
of bright red blood welled against the blade. Rebecca let out a muffled,
terrified whimper behind her duct tape gag.
“If you don’t,” Mercer whispered, “I’ll send her back to her big sister in an
ice chest. You have five hours, Cross. The clock is ticking.”
The screen cut to black.
Silence, thick and suffocating, descended upon the penthouse.
Claire fell to her knees on the rug, her chest heaving, clutching her head in
her hands. “She was trying to pay off debts... oh God, Rebecca, what did you do?
What did you do?”
Footsteps approached. Damian knelt before her. His large hands gently pulled her
wrists away from her face, forcing her to look at him.
“Claire,” he said, his voice deadly steady. “Look at me.”
She met his dark eyes, wild with despair. “He’s going to kill her, Damian. And
then he’s going to kill you.”
“No,” Damian said, his voice vibrating with absolute, terrifying certainty. “He
isn’t. Because Dominic Mercer made one fatal miscalculation tonight.”
Claire sniffled, wiping a tear from her cheek. “What miscalculation?”
“He thinks I’m a businessman who plays by rules when backed into a corner,”
Damian said, his thumb wiping away a drop of blood from her collarbone. “He
thinks I care about shipping leases. He thinks I’m going to negotiate.”
May you like
He stood up, towering over her, and extended a broad, blood-stained hand to pull
her up.
“Get out of that ruined dress, Claire,” Damian said coldly. “Put on tactical
gear from my armory. Because in four hours, we aren't going to negotiate. We’re
going to burn Dominic Mercer’s empire to the ground.”
