Chapter 11 - The Ashes of the Old World
The sunrise over New York Harbor broke through the storm clouds like fractured gold reflecting on broken glass.
Our interceptor boat sliced through the chop toward the quiet private marina at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
Clara held Leo asleep against her chest inside the heated forward cabin, wrapped in heavy wool blankets.
The small boy’s breathing was finally deep, even, and untainted by terror.
Across the cabin, Marcus Vance’s bloodied son, Julian, sat handcuffed to the bulkhead post, his head hanging low, staring at the salt water pooling around his designer loafers.
The sinking of the Leviathan had sent shockwaves across the Atlantic, but the real war was only beginning on dry land.
I wiped the salt spray from my face and stepped down into the cabin, pulling a stainless steel thermos of black coffee from the console.
“Drink,” I told Clara, offering her a steaming ceramic mug.
She looked up, her fingers raw and red from the cold, taking the warm mug with both hands.
“Ethan, is he really gone?” she asked, her voice cracking with the disbelief of someone who had spent five years running through nightmares.
“The Leviathan is four hundred feet down in international waters,” I replied, sitting across from her.
“Nobody survived the lower deck flooding.”
Julian lifted his head, spitting a mouthful of blood onto the rubber decking with a dry, bitter sneer.
“You think Father was the only head on this serpent, Ethan?” Julian wheezed, his broken shoulder throbbing under the makeshift pressure bandage.
“Father was dying.
He hadn't run the operational logistics of the maritime trusts in eighteen months.
Do you really think an old man in a wheelchair organized the satellite tracking, the federal wiretap immunities, and the offshore Swiss wire transfers?”
My eyes narrowed as I set my coffee down on the table.
“You signed the execution orders, Julian,” I said, stepping toward him until my shadow covered his battered face.
“Don't pretend you were just taking notes.”
“I signed the paperwork because I was forced to, little brother!” Julian laughed hysterically, the sound grating like rusty hinges.
“The Board of Directors at Vance Global Holdings approved the harvesting program three quarters ago!
They needed the family trusts intact to collateralize an eight-billion-dollar port expansion in Singapore!
If Clara and the boy died without an identified executor, the entire estate defaulted to the state of Delaware!”
Clara’s hands tightened around her mug until her knuckles turned ivory.
“The Board?” she whispered, horror spreading across her features.
“Uncle Raymond... Aunt Evelyn... they knew?”
“They didn't just know, dear sister,” Julian mockingly spat, blood dripping from his cracked lip.
“They funded the mercenary team that hit Ethan’s clinic on Eighty-Fourth Street!
They’re meeting at the Union League Club on Park Avenue at nine o'clock this morning to file an emergency probate petition declaring you and your son legally deceased at sea!”
I pulled my encrypted satellite phone from my tactical vest and glanced at the time.
It was seven-forty-five in the morning.
The corporate predators who wore three-piece suits and sat in Manhattan high-rises had traded my sister’s youth and my nephew’s blood like common stock commodities.
They believed their white-collar status and legal army made them untouchable compared to street syndicates.
They were about to learn that when you hunt a predator's bloodline, boardroom walls don't stop bullets.
“Marcus,” I called out to my security chief at the helm.
“Get our legal counsel, Donald Torres, and mobilize two strike squads in civilian clothes outside the Union League Club.”
Marcus nodded without looking back, his fingers already dialing the priority frequencies.
“Boss, what do we do with Julian?” Marcus asked over the engine hum.
Julian’s eyes widened with sudden, primal fear as he looked between me and the open gray sea through the rear door.
“Ethan, please... we grew up in the same house!” Julian pleaded, thrashing against the steel cuffs.
“I gave you the names!
I gave you the location of the ship!
You owe me!”
I looked down at the man who had watched our foster father beat us until our skin split, who had signed the checks to put a five-year-old child on a vivisection table.
“You’re right, Julian,” I said, picking up the broken red toy truck from the table and dropping it into Leo’s sleeping hand.
May you like
“You did grow up in the same house.
Which means you know better than anyone that nobody in our family gets away with murder.”
