Chapter 12 - The Edge of the Void
The room exploded into motion.
Henri, a hulking man of fifty with a graying beard and a heavy leather coat, reached for an Uzi sitting on the dining table.
Dominic fired two suppressed rounds through the tabletop before the weapon could clear the surface.
The heavy 9mm slugs punched through Henri’s forearm and shattered the pitcher of water behind him.
Henri screamed, clutching his ruined arm, stumbling backward against the bulkhead sofa.
Arthur Voss spun around from the forward porthole, his face as white as the snow clinging to the glass.
He was wearing a heavy woolen coat, clutching a leather attache case to his chest like an infant.
“Dominic!” Arthur gasped, his voice cracking into a high, hysterical screech.
Behind Henri, a third man—a deck hand hired for muscle—lunged from behind the galley partition with a heavy cargo crowbar raised above his shoulder.
Dominic did not even look directly at him.
He pivoted sharply on his left knee, feeling the joint absorb his shifting center of gravity without giving an inch.
He drove the heavy steel buttstock of the MP5 directly into the man’s throat.
The man dropped the iron bar, gagging for air, collapsing onto the Persian rug.
Silence descended over the salon, save for the wet gurgling of Henri on the sofa and the persistent, heavy groan of the freighter rolling on the swell.
Dominic lowered the muzzle of his weapon until it rested flat against his thigh.
He stepped into the salon, his eyes fixed on Arthur.
Arthur backed away toward the open observation door that led out onto the narrow port bridge wing.
Freezing wind howled through the open doorway, whipping the curtains into frantic white banners.
“Stay away from me, Dominic!” Arthur screamed, raising his left hand while keeping the attache case clamped beneath his right arm.
“Don’t touch me!”
Dominic walked forward, his stride steady, slow, and inexorable.
“You sent armed men to kill a four-year-old child, Arthur.”
“She was four.”
“She doesn't know what a corporation is.”
“She doesn't know what a trust account is.”
“She only knew that you used a wrench to hurt someone.”
Arthur retreated through the doorway, stepping out onto the open bridge wing forty feet above the black, frothing water of Lake Michigan.
Snow swirled around him like a white shroud.
Dominic followed him out into the howling storm.
Vincent was already standing at the top of the opposite exterior stairs, his weapon raised, cutting off any retreat toward the wheelhouse.
Arthur was trapped on the narrow railed balcony between two men who had once called him a brother in business.
The freighter gave a heavy roll to port as an eight-foot swell slammed against the hull.
Arthur slipped on the icy diamond-plate deck, his back hitting the waist-high outer safety railing.
The attache case slipped from his arm, falling open.
Stacks of pristine bearer bonds and counterfeit Canadian transit passports spilled onto the grating, swept away instantly by the gale into the black churn below.
“My files!” Arthur shrieked, clutching the rail with both hands.
Dominic stood five feet away, unmoving against the wind.
“Those files are useless, Arthur.”
“The federal task force raided your downtown penthouse an hour ago.”
“They found the primary ledger in your wall safe.”
“Every payment you made to Delgado.”
“Every contract you brokered with Jean-Paul Laurent.”
“And the original purchase receipts for the pneumatic tools you used on my car’s brake lines.”
Arthur stared at him through hair plastered to his forehead with freezing sleet.
The realization that his entire empire of deceit had been stripped down to bare, frozen steel broke whatever sanity remained in his mind.
“Your father should have killed you when you were born, Dominic!” Arthur screamed over the wind.
“He knew you were soft!”
“He knew you didn't have the stomach to rule this city!”
“My father is dead, Arthur,” Dominic said, his voice cutting through the gale with chilling clarity.
“And his empire died with him.”
“What stands here tonight is mine.”
Dominic stepped forward, closing the distance between them.
Arthur panicked.
He lunged toward the safety railing, attempting to vault over into the freezing water rather than face fifty years in an American federal penitentiary.
His legs cleared the middle rail.
Dominic moved with blinding speed.
He reached out, his iron hand clamping around the collar of Arthur’s heavy wool coat, jerking the older man back from the edge of the void with one tremendous pull of his left arm and torso.
Arthur fell backward onto the frozen deck with a sickening thud, gasping for breath, sobbing uncontrollably.
Dominic stood over him, looking down with neither hatred nor triumph.
There was only the cold, unyielding judgment of a survivor who had reclaimed his life from the grave.
“You don’t get to drown in the lake, Arthur,” Dominic said quietly.
“The lake is too clean for you.”
“You’re going to sit in a federal courtroom.”
“You’re going to look into the eyes of every dockworker whose pension you gambled away.”
“And you’re going to spend the rest of your natural life in a six-by-eight concrete room, listening to the sound of metal doors clicking shut.”
The heavy air horn of an approaching vessel tore through the storm.
Through the swirling snow, the blinding spotlight of an eighty-seven-foot United States Coast Guard cutter swept across the deck of the Laurentian Queen.
A booming voice echoed over the cutter’s public address system:
“Attention vessel Laurentian Queen! This is the United States Coast Guard! Stand down your engines and prepare to be boarded!”
Vincent walked down the bridge wing, looking down at Arthur, who lay curled into a ball on the deck, weeping into his sleeves.
“Coast Guard boarding party is hooking on the starboard ladder, boss,” Vincent reported.
Dominic looked out toward the distant northern horizon, where the faint, warm amber glow of Chicago’s skyline touched the base of the storm clouds.
He reached into his tactical vest pocket.
His fingers brushed against the small, smooth surface of the brass letter opener he had tucked into his pocket before leaving the estate.
He tapped the spring once.
Click.
May you like
“Hand him over to the federal agents, Vincent,” Dominic said, turning his back on Arthur Voss for the last time.
“I have a promise to keep on the North Shore.”
