Chapter 10 - The Execution of the Past
Lucian Delacroix’s face drained of color so fast he looked as though he had been plunged into an icy lake.
"Henri’s daughter," Delacroix whispered, his fingers clawing instinctively toward the automatic pistol at his belt. "You died in the harbor!"
"I learned how to swim, Lucian," Ivy replied, raising her weapon with both hands and firing two rounds straight up through the iron catwalk.
The steel floor plates sparked violently, one bullet punching through the sole of Delacroix’s leather boot, sending him crashing to his knees with a scream of agony.
Borodin roared a Russian curse, pulling his heavy Makarov pistol and leaning over the railing to return fire, but Damon was already moving.
Damon stepped out from the shadows of the grain hopper, firing three rapid, devastating rounds that shattered the iron supports beside Borodin’s head.
The heavy Russian kingpin scrambled backward, his boots slipping in the grain dust as he fled along the elevated walkway toward the rear office bridge.
"Rocco, cut him off at the grain chute!" Damon shouted, sprinting toward the metal staircase that wrapped around the exterior of the central silo.
Rocco was already in position on the lower mezzanine, his suppressed rifle barking in measured, rhythmic intervals, pinning the remaining Russian guards inside the office corridor.
Ivy did not follow Damon after Borodin; she climbed the narrow maintenance ladder directly beneath Delacroix’s position, her eyes fixed on the bleeding Corsican.
Delacroix was crawling toward the emergency fire escape, dragging his shattered foot behind him, leaving a thick smear of dark blood across the diamond-plate steel.
Ivy reached the catwalk, stepping over the railing with the fluid grace of an executioner who had rehearsed this movement in a thousand sleepless nights.
She walked slowly toward him, the soles of her tactical boots clicking rhythmically against the metal grating, matching the frantic pounding of his terrified heart.
"Wait!" Delacroix choked out, rolling over onto his back, holding up his hands to ward off the barrel of her weapon.
"It was business, Ivy! The syndicate in Marseille ordered the purge! Your father wouldn't pay the shipping levy!"
Ivy stopped two paces from where he lay, looking down at him with an expression that was terrifyingly empty of rage, empty of hatred, empty of everything except absolute finality.
"My father gave you a glass of wine when your own brothers kicked you out of the legion in Bastia, Lucian," she said softly.
"He gave you a bed when you were sleeping in the rain behind the fish market."
"I’ll give you the accounts," Delacroix pleaded, his voice breaking into a shrill, pathetic whimper. "Five million in Zurich! Untraceable bonds! Just let me take the boat to Quebec!"
"The boat in Quebec belongs to Jean-Paul Faucher now," Ivy said, cocking the hammer of the nickel-plated pistol with a clean, metallic snap.
"And the only account you’re settling tonight is the one you opened in Cassis four years ago."
Delacroix reached wildly for a hidden blade inside his boot, but Ivy didn't give him the chance to clear the leather.
She pulled the trigger once, the bullet taking him cleanly between the eyes, his head snapping back against the iron railing before his body went limp and motionless.
Ivy stood over the corpse for three seconds, the drifting smell of cordite mixing with the sweet, suffocating dust of the grain elevator.
She felt no sudden burst of triumphant joy, no cinematic closure; only a profound, settling weight lifting from her chest, like an old iron chain slipping into the sea.
Across the elevated gantry, the heavy roar of a shotgun blast echoed through the rafters, followed immediately by the sound of glass shattering into a thousand pieces.
Ivy turned, sprinting along the catwalk toward the glass-walled control room suspended over the main processing floor.
Inside the office, Damon Cole was engaged in a brutal, hand-to-hand war with Nikolai Borodin amid the wreckage of overturned desks and computer terminals.
Borodin, bleeding from multiple gunshot wounds, was swinging a heavy iron pipe with the desperate ferocity of a trapped bear.
Damon ducked beneath a savage swing that pulverized a mahogany credenza, driving his shoulder into the Russian's ribs and slamming him through the plate-glass window.
Both men crashed through the glass, falling ten feet onto the soft, shifting surface of the primary grain hopper below.
The industrial hopper was half-filled with dry, yellow corn, the surface sinking beneath their weight like quicksand as the emergency discharge valve began to cycle.
Borodin lunged forward, wrapping his massive, scarred hands around Damon’s throat, using his immense bulk to pin Damon into the sinking grain.
"I’ll drag you into hell with me, American!" Borodin snarled, his spit flecked with blood as his thumbs pressed savagely into Damon’s windpipe.
Damon’s face darkened, his hands clawing at Borodin’s wrists, his boots finding no purchase in the shifting, treacherous corn beneath him.
Ivy leaped from the broken office frame, landing on the edge of the hopper platform with her weapon drawn, but the shifting grain made a clean shot impossible.
"Damon!" she screamed.
Damon’s eyes met hers through the cloud of grain dust, his vision tunneling as Borodin’s grip choked the remaining air from his lungs.
He didn't panic; he stopped fighting the hands on his throat, reached down into his waistband, and produced the heavy tactical knife he had concealed in Troy.
With a single, explosive thrust born of pure survival, Damon drove the five-inch serrated blade upward, burying the steel beneath Borodin’s chin and into the base of his skull.
Borodin’s eyes rolled back into his head, his massive frame going completely rigid before slumping forward like a felled oak.
Damon shoved the corpse off his chest, gasping violently for air as he fought to pull his legs out of the sinking grain that was swallowing Borodin’s body.
Ivy leaned over the iron lip of the hopper, extending the barrel of her unloaded rifle toward him like a lifeline.
"Grab the sling!" she ordered, bracing her boots against the reinforced steel rim.
Damon caught the heavy nylon webbing with both hands, and with a desperate, synchronized effort, Ivy heaved backward, dragging him out of the suction of the grain pit.
Damon tumbled over the iron lip, landing heavily on the concrete walkway beside her, his chest heaving with violent, ragged breaths.
He lay on his back for a moment, coughing up corn dust, staring at the high corrugated ceiling as the adrenaline slowly drained from his limbs.
Then, he turned his head and looked at Ivy, who was sitting beside him, her face streaked with dust and blood, her hands trembling as the shock finally set in.
Damon reached out, his hand sliding behind her neck, pulling her down until her forehead rested against his heaving chest.
"We got them," Damon whispered, his voice hoarse and raw. "We got every single one of them, Ivy."
Ivy didn't speak; she closed her eyes, listening to the heavy, rhythmic thud of his heart beating steadily beneath her ear, drowning out the ghosts of Cassis, Newark, and Westchester.
Rocco Salerno limped up the metal stairs, his rifle hanging loosely from his good shoulder, looking down at the two of them with a tired, blood-smeared grin.
"The French boys just secured the perimeter gate," Rocco announced, leaning heavily against the railing.
"Faucher is on the satellite phone, Damon. He says the port of Montreal is ours, and he wants to know who he’s sending the bills of lading to."
Damon slowly sat up, his arm remaining firmly wrapped around Ivy’s waist, pulling her up beside him.
He reached into his pocket, retrieved the satellite phone, and pressed the speaker button before handing the receiver directly to Ivy.
"Tell him, Ivy," Damon said, his eyes burning with an unshakable, public devotion that sealed her place beside him forever.
"Tell him who runs the empire now."
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Ivy took the phone, wiped the blood from her cheek with the back of her sleeve, and pressed the receiver to her lips.
"Jean-Paul," Ivy spoke into the line, her voice ringing out through the quiet, ruined terminal in the unmistakable, dominant cadence of the Cole syndicate.
