22: The Shipyard Standoff

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

POV: Julian Vane

The shipyard at midnight was a graveyard of rusted iron and salt-eaten cranes. It was the edge of the world, where the city’s lights died in the dark churn of the Atlantic. Fog rolled in off the water, thick and smelling of oil, clinging to my wool coat like a shroud.

I stood by a stack of rotted shipping crates, the small silver drive in my pocket feeling like a live coal.

"You're late, Julian. I was starting to think Dante had found his spine and stopped you."

Agent Sarah Vance stepped out from behind the shadow of a rusted hull. She wasn't alone. Two men in tactical gear stood fifty paces back, their silhouettes blurred by the mist. They weren't FBI agents; I could tell by the way they held their rifles—loose, casual, like mercenaries.

"Dante doesn't stop me anymore," I said, my voice echoing in the hollow space between the cranes. "He thinks I'm at the estate. He thinks he’s safe."

Vance walked toward me, her heels clicking on the wet asphalt. She looked triumphant. "And do you have it? The keys to the kingdom?"

I pulled the drive from my pocket and held it up between two fingers. The moon caught the metal, a tiny spark in the dark. "Everything is here. The payroll, the routes, the signatures. Including yours, Sarah."

Vance stopped dead. The smug smile on her face didn't fade it froze. The wind whipped a loose strand of hair across her eyes, but she didn't blink. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Unit 742," I said, taking a step toward her. I didn't feel afraid. For the first time since the basement, I felt like the one in control. "My father didn't just pay you to look the other way. He paid you to be his ghost. You buried the North End fire report because you were the one who helped him draft the insurance claim before the bodies were even cold."

Vance’s hand moved instinctively toward the holster at her hip. "You’re reaching, Julian. You’re a traumatized boy trying to make sense of a world that’s too big for you."

"I'm an auditor, Sarah. I don't reach. I calculate." I gestured to the drive. "This isn't just Moretti data. This is a mirror. The moment this drive is plugged into a federal terminal, a sub-routine will trigger. It won't look for Dante. It will look for every transaction tied to your encrypted offshore accounts. It will send a direct ping to the Department of Justice’s Internal Affairs division."

Vance’s face went from pale to a ghostly, translucent white. "You think you’re so smart. You think those men back there won't put a bullet in your head the second I give the word?"

"I think if you give that word, you’ll never get the password to the cloud-backup," I lied. There was no cloud-backup, but in the underworld, a good lie is worth more than a loaded gun. "Kill me, and the data uploads automatically in sixty minutes. Walk away, and I might just forget to hit 'send'."

"You’re a Vane after all," she hissed, her eyes darting to her men. She was calculating her odds, weighing her life against her greed. "You're just as cold as your father."

"No," I said, my voice dropping to a whisper. "My father killed for money. I’m doing this for a debt."

I tossed the drive onto the wet ground between us. "Take it. Run. If I see your face in this city again, I won't call the FBI. I’ll let my husband deal with you. And you’ve seen what he does to people who touch what’s his."

Vance looked at the drive on the ground, then at me. She knew she was beaten. She knew that the "Golden Prince" had outplayed her. She knelt, snatched the drive from the puddle, and backed away into the fog.

"This isn't over, Julian," she called out, her voice disappearing into the mist.

"It is for you," I whispered.

I stood there until the sound of their engine faded into the distance. The silence of the shipyard returned, heavy and cold. I reached into my other pocket and pulled out my phone. One button. One command.

Execute: Poison Pill.

Somewhere in a car ten miles away, the drive in Vance’s hand was already beginning its work. It didn't need a federal terminal. It just needed a signal.

"You always did like a dramatic exit."

I turned. Dante was leaning against a crane twenty feet away. He hadn't stayed at the estate. He had been there the whole time, a shadow in the darkness, watching over me.

"You let her walk," Dante said, walking toward me. He looked at the spot where she had disappeared. "I could have ended her, Julian. One word from you."

"A bullet is too quick for her," I said, letting out a long, shaky breath. "She’s going to spend the rest of her life in the same kind of cage she tried to put you in. That’s the real Vane justice."

Dante stopped in front of me. He reached out and grabbed my lapels, pulling me close until I could feel the heat of his body. He looked at me truly looked at me not as an asset or a husband, but as his equal.

"The debt is paid, Julian," he murmured. "The Vanes are gone. The feds are blind. The city is quiet."

"For now," I said, reaching up to touch the silver ring on his finger.

"For now," he agreed.

He picked me up, his arms a solid, immovable weight, and carried me back toward the car. The fog was lifting, and for the first time in fifteen years, I could see the stars over the North End.

We had burned the world down to build a new one. And as the sun began to rise over the Atlantic, I knew that the "Widow’s Blood Debt" was finally, truly settled.