Chapter 9 - The Armor-Plated Convoy Through the Midnight Rain and the Confrontation Inside the Riverside Penthouse
The rain poured down in sheets, blurring the neon lights of the city into bleeding streaks of red and yellow as a convoy of three black, armor-plated SUVs sliced through the midnight traffic.
Inside the middle vehicle, the atmosphere was thick enough to cut with a knife.
Delphine sat in the plush leather backseat, staring straight ahead through the tinted window at the sliding concrete barriers of the expressway.
Her overnight bag—a single worn canvas duffel containing her modest clothes and a few medical reference books—sat on the floor between her boots.
Sloan sat beside her, perfectly still, his broad shoulders filling the backseat.
He hadn’t spoken a single word since they left the dry cleaners.
His phone buzzed softly against his knee every few seconds with encrypted status updates from his enforcers surrounding the Riverside Penthouse downtown.
“The perimeter is locked down,” Bishop’s voice crackled quietly through the front cabin intercom.
“No one enters or leaves the penthouse without our authorization. Viktor’s personal security detail is downstairs in the lobby, completely unaware that we’ve cut their communications array.”
Sloan tapped his finger twice against the armrest in acknowledgment.
He turned his head slightly, looking at Delphine’s profile in the dim illumination of the dashboard.
“You don’t have to watch what’s about to happen,” Sloan murmured, his voice surprisingly soft compared to the cold steel he used with his men.
“I’ve seen worse than anything your cousin can throw at you, Sloan,” Delphine replied without turning her head, her voice ice-cold.
“Remember? I lived in your world for two years before I figured out how to fake my own disappearance. I know how the Marchetti family solves its domestic disputes.”
Sloan didn’t answer.
He knew she was right.
The vehicle rolled smoothly to a halt in the subterranean private parking garage of the Riverside Penthouse tower.
The heavy metal doors of the garage closed shut behind them, sealing off the outside world.
Bishop opened the rear door, stepping aside with a silent nod.
Sloan stepped out first, extending a large, powerful hand toward Delphine.
She looked at his hand for a fraction of a second, then ignored it entirely, sliding across the leather seat and stepping out onto the wet concrete under her own power.
Sloan didn’t react to her rejection; a faint, grim smirk touched the corner of his mouth before he turned toward the private elevator bank.
The private elevator sped upward toward the penthouse suite with silent, dizzying speed.
The digital floor numbers glowed a bright, ominous red:
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
Ding.
The elevator doors slid open directly into the sprawling, glass-walled luxury of the penthouse lounge.
Soft jazz music played from concealed speakers.
Expensive crystal decanters filled with aged scotch sat upon a polished marble bar.
And sitting around a felt-topped poker table near the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the rain-slicked city skyline were four men in immaculate designer tuxedos.
At the center of them sat Viktor Marchetti—older, sharper-featured than Sloan, with cold, calculating eyes and a thin, arrogant smile playing across his lips as he tossed a stack of ceramic poker chips onto the center of the table.
“Well, well,” Viktor drawled, not even bothering to look up immediately as the elevator doors chimed.
“I thought you’d be spending your entire night hovering over little Cora’s hospital bed, cousin. Did the doctors finally tell you there’s nothing left to save?”
The music continued to play.
None of the other three men at the table moved.
They assumed Viktor’s personal guards were still stationed downstairs in the lobby.
They didn’t hear the soft, lethal click of four suppressed firearms resting against the temples of their own chairs as Bishop and his tactical team materialized silently from the shadows behind them.
Sloan walked slowly across the plush Persian rug, his boots making a soft, rhythmic thud against the fabric.
He didn't say a word.
He simply pulled out a heavy, blood-stained leather ledger and tossed it casually onto the center of the poker table, scattering the chips across the felt.
Viktor stopped smiling.
He slowly lifted his eyes from his cards, his gaze shifting upward from Sloan’s heavy boots, past his broad chest, and straight up into Sloan’s cold, dead eyes.
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“What is this?” Viktor asked, his voice losing its easy arrogance as a cold sweat broke out across his forehead.
“That,” Sloan said, his voice dropping into a terrifyingly quiet whisper that echoed off the glass walls, “is your signature, cousin. On a wire transfer to a dead man who tried to poison my sister four hours ago.”
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