Chapter 2 - The Red Bag on the Slipway
The roar of the offshore diesel launch tore through the silence of the cliffs like an iron saw through bone.
Julian didn't hesitate for a heartbeat.
He didn't scream an order. He didn't draw a weapon in front of the forty guests.
He reached into his tailored tuxedo jacket, pulled free an encrypted tactical radio, and keyed the emergency maritime channel with his thumb.
“Frank.”
A harsh, gravelly voice crackled back from the speaker: “Command, Don Julian.”
“Cut the power to the private slipway,” Julian whispered, his baritone so flat, so lethal that the crystal stemware on the table began to hum with tension. “Drop the harbor boom. Raise the underwater steel net across the channel mouth. If that black interceptor tries to round the point, fire two armor-piercing rounds through the outboards.”
“Net deploying now, boss. Snipers are locked on the breakwater.”
Victoria lunged forward, her fingers clawing frantically at Julian’s sleeve, her manicured composure shattering into raw, jagged hysteria.
“Julian, stop! You don't understand! Donald only took him to the yacht club to protect him! The offshore syndicate was moving on the house tonight—we were securing your heir!”
Julian didn't speak to her.
He simply reached down, caught her wrist in his massive, calloused palm, and twisted with cold, measured force.
A sharp shriek tore from Victoria’s throat as her fingers sprang open. She stumbled back across the marble floorboards, knocking a silver ice bucket from its pedestal. It crashed against the flagstones, dumping twenty pounds of crushed ice and melting slush across her crimson silk gown.
Julian turned his slate-gray eyes down to me.
“Clara.”
“Yes, Mr. Vance?” I breathed, still holding Don Arthur’s trembling hand.
“Stay with my father. If anyone approaches this wheelchair without my direct authorization, Roberto will put a bullet through their eye.”
Roberto—a six-foot-four enforcer who had guarded the Vance family for twenty years—stepped out from the archway, his hand already resting inside his coat on the butt of an automatic weapon.
Julian turned on his heel.
He moved toward the French doors leading to the sea terrace with the silent, terrifying speed of an uncoiling spring.
I looked at Arthur.
The old man’s eyes were blazing with ancient, sovereign fire. He pressed my hand once, twice, three times, nodding toward the terrace.
“Go...” Arthur wheezed, his vocal cords straining against the paralysis. “Help... my... boy...”
May you like
I rose from the floor, smoothed my gray scrub dress, and bolted through the shattered glass doors into the freezing salt wind.
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