Chapter 27 Twenty-Six
The Golden Dragon Casino dominated the Macau skyline. Glass towers rose from a gold-accented base, the lower levels cluttered with ornate Chinese motifs and digital displays. Shaw had claimed the top floors for his regional headquarters, converting luxury suites into his personal monument.
The whole place was tacky.
The woman walking three paces ahead of us was not.
Ling Wei moved through the VIP corridor like she owned it, which in many ways she did.
Boone's former MSS contact had traded government intelligence work for corporate efficiency five years ago, climbing to VIP operations manager at the Golden Dragon through a combination of competence and carefully applied blackmail.
She was tall for a Chinese woman, with sharp cheekbones and black hair pulled into a severe bun that emphasized the angles of her face.
Her charcoal Chanel suit probably cost more than most of Shaw's security guards made in a month.
Late forties, I estimated, though she carried herself with the coiled alertness of someone half her age.
The two million I'd transferred to her Cayman account guaranteed twelve hours of cooperation. Loyalty was never for sale, but calculated risk management could be purchased.
"Security checkpoint ahead," Ling murmured. "Five guards. Rotational shift change in thirty seconds."
Maxime's hand brushed mine in a silent signal. He carried only his sidearm for this phase, with no gunshots permitted until we reached Shaw's office and no shell casings to leave behind.
My hip throbbed with each step. The barometric pressure in Macau was hell on surgical pins.
Ling approached the checkpoint with a dazzling smile, rapid Cantonese flowing. "Distinguished investors," she explained in English to the lead guard. "Mr. Shaw requested a private tour before tomorrow's expansion announcement."
The guard's eyes narrowed. "I received no notification."
His earpiece crackled, and Xavier's voice came through our comms, confirming he'd fed the security codes remotely from Cincinnati. The guard relaxed.
"Please proceed."
Twenty meters beyond, Ling's smile vanished. She nodded toward the service corridor. "Maintenance access as promised. Camera feeds on eight-second delays. Our arrangement concludes here." She slipped a keycard into Maxime's hand. "Upper floors require biometric authentication. This bypasses once."
Her eyes met mine. "Shaw killed my brother during the Beijing acquisition. Consider my cooperation a business transaction with beneficial externalities." She turned away without waiting for acknowledgment.
The service corridor light flickered as the first guard rounded the corner. Maxime moved with his hand over the man's mouth and delivered a precise strike to the temple that dropped the body without a sound.
The second guard reached for his radio, and my cane caught him beneath the jaw to crush his larynx. He dropped.
Three more emerged from the security station. Maxime glanced at me, and I nodded.
He was efficient, as he always had been. The first guard never saw the strike coming. The second reached for his weapon, but Maxime was inside his guard, driving an elbow to the temple before the gun cleared the holster. The third leveled his weapon at me.
He was an amateur, a local hire rather than Shaw's elite, and his stance telegraphed everything.
I stepped into his space and brought my cane down on his wrist. The gun clattered to the floor, and confusion crossed his face as he tried to understand how a man with a cane could move that fast. It was his final thought before my silver handle crushed his trachea.
My leg screamed at me for the rapid movement, and I ignored it.
I collected the radio units and security badges for Xavier to disable remotely.
"Camera loop confirmed," Xavier reported through our earpieces. "Reid's team secured the sublevel. Prototype location confirmed. Elevator access twenty meters ahead."
Reid's voice cut in. "East corridor clear. Moving to extraction with the package. You're clear to proceed to Shaw."
The elevator doors parted to reveal private access to the executive level, and Ling's keycard worked perfectly.
The interior featured gold-veined marble floors and mahogany panels, wealth designed to intimidate visitors before they reached Shaw.
The gold Fibonacci spiral on the control panel mimicked my Spade Tower design, but the proportions were poor and the edges uneven in another failed attempt at replication.
"Identical security architecture," Maxime said, standing close enough that his breath warmed my neck. "Two generations behind ours."
Shaw's obsession with replication never included timeliness.
The elevator ascended. Twenty-six hours had passed since I'd marked him, since I'd claimed him, and his proximity still did things to me I couldn't afford. Not yet.
But soon. After the mission, after Shaw, after vengeance. The future had always been tactical objectives and acquisitions, but now it held other possibilities, dangerous ones.
"He builds his kingdom from our scraps," I said.
My watch vibrated with Reid's message: East sector clear. Security neutralized. Prototype secured.
Reid had the Banshee, and now I just needed Shaw.
The doors opened onto a gallery of insults.
A Basquiat landscape hung on the left wall with a composition eerily similar to mine in Cincinnati, while a Hemming sculpture from the artist's lesser Blue Period stood opposite.
Shaw had studied photographs of my collection and acquired whatever approximations he could find, treating art as inventory rather than revelation in another fundamental misunderstanding of power.
Maxime's shoulder brushed mine as we approached the corner. The bruises I'd left along his throat were visible above his tactical collar, purple-black against olive skin. He was mine.
"Two guards ahead," he whispered. "Local security. They look nervous."
The silver tip of my cane pressed into imported marble, and each step sent pain radiating up my damaged leg where metal ground against bone. I welcomed it because pain clarified and pain focused.
I nodded once.
Maxime moved, and the guard on the left registered the threat too late. Hand over mouth, strike to the nerve cluster, and the body went down silent. The second reached for his weapon, and I struck with my cane to the jaw and collapsed his throat before a second strike to the temple finished it.
We dragged the bodies behind an antique screen, and our eyes met briefly in the silent language of thirty-two years. I noted the dilation of his pupils and the slight flush beneath his skin. The hunt always affected him this way.
"Ready?" He withdrew his sidearm.
I nodded.
The doors swung open to reveal Shaw's private office. Floor-to-ceiling windows displayed Macau's skyline as casino lights pulsed across the harbor. The space was a masterclass in wealth without taste, with every element selected to mirror what he'd seen in my residences over the years.
Maxime drew his suppressed Glock, stepping into position at my right. The time for stealth was over.
The rosewood desk was custom carved to mirror mine but with the proportions all wrong.
The Italian leather chair was a shade too orange to be genuine cognac.
Black marble veined with gold stood where mine featured blue-black basalt, and the crystal decanter mimicked my antique Baccarat, but the cut lacked quality.
It was like a child's crayon approximation of a masterpiece.
Behind the oversized desk sat Gideon Shaw, with his silver hair immaculate and his tailored suit too tight across the shoulders. A crystal tumbler of amber liquid rested by his right hand, and the smile that spread across his face contained nothing but smug satisfaction.
"Algerone." He raised his glass in mock salute. "Your timing is impeccable as always."
"Shaw." I moved further into the room, cane tapping marble. "Still playing dress-up in my castoffs."
His smile faltered before returning with forced confidence. "The same arrogance. Even when you're breaking into my office."
"Recovering stolen property requires access to the thief." I noted the security cameras at each corner.
Shaw swirled his liquor. "Twelve of the world's most motivated buyers are assembling as we speak."
His gaze shifted to Maxime, whose weapon remained trained on Shaw's chest. "Maxime. Still the loyal attack dog." His eyes lingered on the visible bruises above Maxime's collar. "I see Algerone has finally taken what you've offered so pathetically all these years."
Something murderous flashed in Maxime's eyes. His finger tightened on the trigger.
"The buyers will be expecting their demonstration." I stepped forward, drawing Shaw's attention back to me. "Too bad your merchandise has already been recovered."
Shaw's expression flickered as uncertainty crept in before he masked it. "You're bluffing."
"Reid's team secured the prototype ten minutes ago. Your auction is over."
"Whoever orchestrated your little heist had inside knowledge." Shaw's smile turned predatory, though it no longer reached his eyes. "Guard rotations, security protocols. I've been watching your team's footprints across my systems. You're getting careless in your rush for vengeance, Algerone."
His left hand moved beneath the desk toward what had to be a silent alarm, and I noted the time constraints tightening.
"The bidding was supposed to start at six billion," Shaw said. "Matching what your Pentagon contract was worth before they terminated it. But I suppose that hardly matters now."
"We're here to end this," Maxime said, his voice steady and lethal. "Not discuss your failed business ventures."
Shaw leaned back in his chair as the leather creaked beneath him.
"We could have been unstoppable together.
I offered you a partnership in Dubai. But you had to own everything.
Control everyone." His eyes flicked to Maxime.
"Even your precious right hand. That's always been your weakness, Algerone. Your pathological need for dominance."
My jaw tightened, and my grip on the cane whitened my knuckles. "Your point?"
"We're not so different, you and I." He moved toward the wall behind his desk, where a subtle seam revealed a concealed compartment. "Both willing to do whatever necessary. Both creators of empires."
His smile turned smug. "Though I suppose some would say I had advantages. Greenwich prep school while you had Shane's trailer park. Harvard legacy admission while you were hustling pool halls. But we ended up in the same place, didn't we? That must burn."
My molars ground together. Shaw rarely mentioned his privileged upbringing and even less my origins. These were old wounds I'd cauterized decades ago.
"The difference," I said, advancing another step, "is that I don't use weapons of mass destruction to settle corporate grudges."
"No?" Shaw laughed, the sound sharp and brittle. "What about the Caracas operation? Fourteen civilians dead because the Venezuelan minister wouldn't approve your mining rights." His eyes narrowed. "We're not so different. I'm just more honest about what we are."
"You murdered over a thousand people to prove a point," Maxime said, his voice steady and lethal.
Shaw's eyes flicked to my face, searching for weakness. He found it when a muscle twitched beneath my eye, and his expression shifted from irritation to hunger.
"Always the conscience of the operation." Shaw turned his focus to Maxime. "The morality to balance Algerone's ruthlessness. The perfect complement." He reached into the desk drawer. "Tell me, Maxime. Does he value your loyalty as much as you value his approval?"
Maxime didn't answer because he didn't need to.
The question wasn't his to answer, and that was the problem. Shaw had found the hairline fracture, the invisible space between what Maxime offered and what I allowed myself to take.
"You know," Shaw continued, pulling a tablet from the drawer, "your entire relationship fascinates me.
The loyal second-in-command who would die for a man who sees him as furniture.
" He tapped the screen and turned it toward us.
"Much like this prototype. Your creation, Algerone, but improved under my care.
I wonder which of you will prove more adaptable. "
The tablet displayed modified Banshee schematics. My weapon had been crudely altered, with Shaw replacing precision engineering with brute force and sacrificing targeting accuracy for raw destruction. The modifications were amateur, made by someone who understood the market but not the mechanics.
"Enough," I said, and stepped forward. "You're coming with us. The auction is over, your prototype is gone, and you have nothing left to bargain with."
Shaw's eyes flicked to my chest, then back to my face. His smile changed, sharpening into something I recognized too late.
His hand moved beneath the desk.
Maxime saw it before I did. His body was already moving as Shaw's arm came up with the gun.
Maxime stepped in front of me.
The gunshot tore through the room.
His body jerked backward into mine, the impact driving us both stumbling. His hand clutched at his chest, and a sound escaped him that I had never heard in three decades of violence.
I caught him as his legs gave out. His weight dragged us both down, my damaged leg buckling beneath the strain. The marble floor rushed up to meet us.
"Maxime." His name came out wrong, stripped of authority, stripped of everything but the raw thing underneath.
His eyes found mine, wide with shock. He didn't speak. He didn't move again.