Chapter 3 - The Broken Jaw of Donald Sterling
The private slipway was slick with freezing spray, the Atlantic chop battering the concrete pylons forty feet below the terrace.
At the end of the wooden floating dock, the forty-foot black interceptor was pitching violently against its moorings.
The high-tensile steel harbor net had already breached the surface forty yards out, its heavy yellow buoys sealing the passage to the open ocean.
Standing on the deck of the launch, his leather jacket drenched in spray, was Donald Sterling.
Tucked under his left arm was six-year-old Leo, wrapped in a heavy wool blanket, his small face streaked with tears, screaming into the wind as Donald dragged him toward the cabin hatch.
“Shut up, you little bastard!” Donald snarled, trying to force the boy through the companionway. “Your father is about to sign over thirty percent of the Atlantic terminals for your skin!”
“Donald!”
The voice hit the concrete pier like a thunderclap.
Donald froze, spinning around on the rocking deck, reaching for the heavy automatic holstered at his hip.
Julian was already clearing the metal gangway.
He didn't draw a pistol. He didn't take cover behind the fuel pumps.
He closed the thirty-foot distance across the floating timber with the terrifying momentum of an iron freight train.
Donald raised his weapon, his finger tightening on the trigger—
Julian’s left hand struck Donald’s gun hand from below, driving the muzzle toward the black sky just as a gunshot cracked through the gale.
The bullet tore harmlessly through the fiberglass canopy.
In the same fluid, unbroken motion, Julian’s right hand caught Donald’s leather collar, wrenching the man clean off his feet and slamming him down onto the soaked teak deck of the boat.
Leo tumbled free onto the deck cushions, sobbing: “Daddy! Daddy!”
Julian scooped his six-year-old son into his left arm, holding the boy tight against his chest, shielding him from the freezing rain with his broad body.
Then he looked down at Donald Sterling.
Donald was scrambling backward across the wet deck, his nose bleeding, his breath coming in ragged, terrified gasps.
“Julian... listen to me! Victoria planned it! She told me the old man was about to die! We needed collateral before you took over the trusts!”
Julian stepped forward.
With clinical, bone-shattering precision, Julian drove the heavy heel of his bespoke leather shoe straight into Donald Sterling’s jaw.
CRACK.
The sound of fracturing bone was loud and wet over the roar of the surf.
Donald’s head snapped backward against the aluminum gunwale, teeth and a dark spray of crimson splattering across the white fiberglass before his body slumped unconscious into the bilge.
Julian didn't look down at the ruined predator.
He turned toward the gangway, cradling Leo against his neck, where I was standing trembling at the edge of the dock.
Leo saw me through the rain, his small arms reaching out from Julian’s coat.
“Clara! Clara, the bad man locked my red bag in the boat!”
I stepped onto the pitching deck, taking the sobbing child into my arms, wrapping my wool cardigan around his drenched shoulders.
Julian looked down at me, his slate-gray eyes burning with an ocean of raw, unvarnished devotion.
“Take him to the master suite, Clara,” Julian murmured, his deep baritone rumbling through the storm. “Dry him. Feed him. He is safe now.”
He reached down, his large, scarred hand gently wiping away a tear from my cold cheekbone with his thumb.
May you like
“And then come back down to the sea cellar. My father told us to look in the vault.”
---
