Chapter 10 - Retribution at Dawn
The freezing rain fell in sheets over the Hudson River docks.
Julian Vance staggered through the abandoned shipping yard, his bespoke coat soaked, clutching a briefcase stuffed with bearer bonds and forged passports. Behind him, the sound of his Viper squad dying one by one in the shadows echoed through the night.
He reached the end of Pier 42, where a private speedboat was supposed to be idling.
There was no boat. Only the dark, swirling waters of the Hudson.
"Looking for your ride, Julian?"
Vance whipped around.
Adrian and Evangeline emerged from behind a row of rusted shipping containers. Adrian held an umbrella over her head, though the rain couldn't dampen the lethal majesty she radiated. Behind them, twenty heavily armed Kane enforcers formed an unbroken wall of iron and steel.
Vance dropped the briefcase onto the wet wooden planks, pulling a gold-plated revolver. "Stay back! You stay the hell back, you little gutter rat!"
Adrian didn't even draw his weapon. He simply looked at Evangeline. "It's your call. The NYPD has the surveillance files. The federal marshals have already seized Vance Global's assets. He spends his life in a supermax cage, or he feeds the fish tonight. Your word is law."
Evangeline walked toward Vance. She didn't stop until the barrel of his revolver was trembling six inches from her forehead.
"Pull it," she said quietly.
Vance’s hand shook violently. The cold reality of what he had done—and who she had become—finally crushed him. "Evie... please. Your father was my friend..."
"My father called you a brother," Evangeline whispered, her voice colder than the river beneath them. "And you shot him in the back while he held my hand."
She reached out, wrapped her slender fingers around the barrel of his gun, and forced it down toward the wood. Vance fell to his knees in the puddles, weeping like a broken child.
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"Dying in this river is too easy for you," Evangeline said, turning her back on him. "I want you to sit in a concrete cell every single day for the rest of your pathetic life, knowing that the homeless girl you stepped over on Fifth Avenue is sitting in your office, wearing your crown, and erasing your name from history."
She looked at Adrian. "Call the marshals. Let them take the trash away."
