Chapter 27 #2
I squeeze my eyes tightly shut, forcing a wet, realistic sob into the back of my throat.
“The Russians,” I cry, my voice breaking. “They found the estate where I was being held. There was a shootout. The man who kidnapped me... he’s dead.”
I open my eyes and look directly at Cassian. He is perfectly still, a dark statue watching me lie without blinking.
“I ran,” I sob into the mic, pitching my voice up with manufactured panic. “I hid in the woods while they were fighting. But Daddy... before I ran, I grabbed a flash drive from his desk. It’s what they were fighting over.”
I pause for two seconds, letting a shuddering, terrified breath fill the silence on the recording.
“I plugged it into my phone. I don’t understand the files, but your name is all over them. Daddy, I think they’re going to use it against you. I think they want to ruin you.”
I drop my voice to a frantic, terrified whisper.
“I’m so scared. I hid in the back of a delivery truck to get across the bridge, and now I’m in an alley in the city.
I can’t go to the police. I don’t know who to trust. Please, Daddy.
Come get me. Meet me at the Waldorf. The VIP study.
It’s the only place I know I can get inside using your code where I’m safe.
Tonight at midnight. Please come yourself. ”
I let out one final, stifled, agonizing sob.
“I love you.”
I reach out and tap the spacebar on Varro’s keyboard. The recording stops.
The low hum of the servers returns to the room.
I pull the headset off and set it gently on the glass table. My breathing instantly returns to normal. I straighten my spine. The mask drops, leaving my features blank.
Varro is staring at me, seeming genuinely unnerved.
“Upload it,” I say. “Send it.”
Varro clicks his mouse. “Sent. It’s sitting in his secure inbox right now.”
I look at Cassian. He hasn’t moved an inch. His eyes assess me.
“You were too good at that,” he says.
“I spent twenty-four years twisting myself into the perfect daughter,” I reply, holding his gaze without flinching. “This was one more performance.”
He pushes off the edge of the table. The hesitation is gone. The reluctance is burned away by the undeniable reality that I’m not the terrified girl he dragged out of the museum anymore. I’m a loaded gun, and I’m ready to fire.
He reaches into the pocket of his cargo pants and hands me a small, translucent piece of plastic—a microscopic earpiece. I press it into my ear canal, the device seating with a tiny click.
“Varro,” he barks, taking full command of the room. “I want Team 6 mobilized. Black SUVs, no plates, heavily armed. Gear up.”
Without waiting for a reply, he turns toward the steel door at the back of the command center and walks into the staging bay. I follow immediately.
Six men are already there. They are the same shadows I saw at the museum—ex-military, efficient, and currently stripped to their T-shirts as they check their gear. They stop as Cassian enters. The temperature in the room seems to drop.
“Change of plans,” he says. His voice is flat. “We aren’t defensive anymore. We’re hitting the city.”
A man named Kael, whose arms are a map of scar tissue, stops mid-load on his rifle. “The city? The NYPD is still crawling over Midtown. What’s the target?”
“Judge William Hale,” Cassian says.
The men look at each other. They know the Judge. In their world, Hale is the infrastructure—the reason their warrants disappear and their shipments clear the docks.
“Hale is the benefactor,” Kael says, his voice low. “You’re talking about hitting the man who keeps us out of a cage.”
“I’m talking about hitting a man who tried to burn this house with you inside,” Cassian counters.
He steps into Kael’s space, forcing the man to look up.
“He targeted this network. He used the Syndicate to liquidate his remaining assets. Meaning us. He’s closing the books, Kael.
If we don’t drop him tonight, there won’t be anyone left to clear your warrants because you’ll be dead or buried. ”
Cassian looks at the rest of them. “I swore a blood oath to this man. I was wrong. He’s a parasite. He sold my loyalty to cover his tracks. Now, you can either sit here and wait for the feds, or you can follow me and ensure he never speaks again.”
Kael looks at me, his eyes lingering on the bruises on my neck, then back at Cassian. He slaps the magazine into his rifle with a metallic clack. “What’s the play?”
“We lure him to the Waldorf,” Cassian says, spreading the blueprints on a metal workbench.
“He thinks he’s coming to collect a loose end.
Team 6 handles the perimeter. Varro has the grid, but Hale is the Chairman—he has a biometric override.
Varro is running a hard-line tap into the museum’s junction box to kill that override before we arrive. ”
“What about the street-level response?” Kael asks.
“I want a two-block dead zone,” Cassian says.
“If a cruiser turns the corner, jam their comms. Use the shill vehicles—the construction van and the staged fender-bender—to reroute traffic away from the plaza. If Hale brings a detail, let them park. Don’t engage unless they try to breach the doors.
This has to look like a private meeting. ”
“And if it goes sideways?” another man asks.
“It won’t,” Cassian says. “Because I’ll be inside. You are the wall, gentlemen. Nobody gets through you.”
Cassian picks up a tactical vest from the rack and slides it over his head, his jaw tightening as he navigates the stiffness in his shoulder.
He checks the plates, then checks the load on his rifle.
“Check your comms. If you see a badge that isn’t on our payroll, you report it. We leave in ten minutes.”
The men move. The hesitation is gone, replaced by the focus of a unit given an execution order.
Cassian heads down the narrow concrete corridor toward the armory, his pace hurried. My earpiece chirps.
“Grid is live, Boss,” Varro reports over the comms. “The dead zone is established. I’ve looped the plaza cameras. If a uniform patrol even sniffs that block, I’ll have them redirected before they see the SUVs.”
“Good,” Cassian says into his mic. He stops at the armory door, his hand hovering over the biometric scanner. He turns to me, his dark eyes intense.
“Hale won’t risk uniform cops seeing the Ledger,” he says, his voice low. “He won’t call the police. He knows better than to let a public record start before he has the drive in his hand. But he won’t come alone.”
“The cleaners,” I say, the word feeling cold in my mouth.
“Ex-military or corrupt badges on his personal payroll,” Cassian says. “Men who know how to make a body disappear.”
“Like you,” I say.
He holds my gaze for a fraction of a second, leaving the truth hanging between us. He gestures toward the door at the far end of the bunker.
“Come with me,” he commands.
I follow him down the concrete corridor to the biometric lock. He scans his palm, and the door slides open, revealing the primary armory.
The air inside smells sharply of gun oil, brass, and cold steel. Racks of matte-black assault rifles line the walls. Stacks of ammunition crates sit on metal shelving.
He walks past the ordnance and stops at a locked glass drawer, where he punches in a four-digit code and opens the steel tray. He reaches inside and pulls out a small, sleek, matte-black handgun.
He turns to me, ejects the magazine with his thumb, checks the load, slaps it back in, and racks the slide against his belt with his right hand to chamber a round.
He holds the gun out to me, grip first.
“A SIG P365,” he says, his voice clinical. “It’s a micro-compact nine-millimeter. Small enough to conceal at the small of your back under your shirt, but it packs enough stopping power to drop a man in body armor.”
I stare at the weapon. My heart beats a little faster, but my hands don’t shake as I reach out and take it from him. The metal is heavy and freezing cold against my palm.
"I held your gun in the tunnel," I admit quietly, staring at the weapon. "But I don't actually know how to shoot."
“You aren’t going to be shooting from a distance,” he says, stepping behind me.
He wraps his right hand directly over mine, guiding my fingers into the proper grip.
He adjusts my thumb, placing it against the safety.
“I’m going to handle the heavy lifting. I’m going to drop the cleaners.
But if things go sideways, if someone gets past me and puts their hands on you, I need you to know how to pull the trigger. ”
He presses his chest against my back, his breath warm against my neck.
“Flick the safety down,” he instructs.
I push the small metal lever down with my thumb. It clicks softly.
“Good. Now aim for the center of mass,” he murmurs, pointing my hands toward the blank concrete wall. “Don’t aim for the head. Aim for the chest. It’s the biggest target. Grip it tight, brace for the recoil, and pull the trigger until the magazine is empty.”
“Until it’s empty,” I repeat, memorizing the weight of the gun in my hands.
“Don’t hesitate, Iris,” he says, his voice dropping into a dark, visceral growl against my ear. “If a man comes at you tonight, don’t warn him. Don’t try to reason with him. Put him in the ground. Do you understand me?”
“I understand.”
He steps back, letting me hold the weapon on my own. I click the safety back up and carefully tuck the gun into the waistband of my pants, resting it at the small of my back where my T-shirt easily conceals it.
He reaches into his vest and presses a sleek metal flash drive into my free hand. "A decoy," he says. "Varro has the real one. Keep it in your pocket. Make him look at it."
He reaches back into the drawer and pulls out a sleek, black combat knife in a Kydex sheath. He kneels down in front of me and clips the sheath securely to the canvas belt at my hip.
He stands back up, looking down at me. I’m fully armed, standing in a concrete bunker, carrying a loaded gun, preparing to orchestrate the execution of my own father.
He reaches out, his right hand gripping my waist, pulling me flush against the hard lines of his chest.
“Tonight, we end it,” Cassian whispers.
“Tonight,” I agree.
He turns his back, grabbing two spare rifle magazines from the table and slamming them into the pouches on his belt.
I wipe my bruised mouth with the back of my hand, turn on my heel, and walk out of the armory, ready for war.