Chapter 10
The rain had intensified into a howling northeaster by the time Tavish walked out onto the stone portico of the manor.
The wind tore at the hem of his dark overcoat, whipping salt spray and pine needles across the driveway. Four black armored Suburbans were idling on the gravel, their headlights cutting twin beams of brilliant white through the storm. Twenty men in dark tactical gear stood at attention along the balustrade, their weapons concealed beneath heavy waterproof coats, their faces carved from stone.
Marcus walked up the steps, his boots crunching over the wet stone.
"The Vances are in the boathouse cellar, Mr. Rookfield," Marcus reported, wiping rain from his temple. "What are your orders regarding their disposal?"
Tavish adjusted the gold signet ring on his finger, checking the face of his Patek Philippe. It was precisely one-fifteen in the morning.
"Leave them tied to the iron rings on the lower pier," Tavish said, his tone devoid of passion. "The tide peaks at three. If Julian can swim with broken ribs, God can have mercy on him. I won't."
Marcus nodded once, without hesitation. "Understood, sir."
Tavish pulled his satellite phone from his pocket as it began to vibrate with a high-priority encrypted ping. He tapped the receiver to his ear.
"Speak."
A harsh, rasping voice filled the line—coarse, heavy with a thick Boston accent, backed by the metallic drone of an idling private jet.
"Tavish Rookfield," the voice growled with sickening amusement. "I hear you had quite an exciting engagement party."
Tavish did not blink. "Dominic."
"Your fiancée was very cooperative before she lost her mind," Dominic Monticello chuckled over the static. "She gave us the access codes to the southern terminals three days ago. And right now, I’m sitting in a private hangar at Logan Airport with your pretty little wife sitting ten feet away from me."
Tavish’s grip on the titanium phone tightened until the casing creaked.
"Listen to me very carefully, Dominic," Tavish said, his voice dropping into that quiet, terrifying frequency that made the men around him stand straighter. "If there is a single scratch on Clara’s skin, I will not just kill you. I will dismantle every business, every property, and every living relative that carries the Monticello name from Maine to Rhode Island."
A low, mocking laugh answered him from the other end.
"You don't hold the cards anymore, old man," Dominic sneered. "You have until sunrise. Bring the original ledgers from your mother’s vault to the dry docks at Charlestown. Just you, the papers, and the brass key. If I see a single one of your harbor boats within five miles of the bay, Clara gets a concrete necklace and a dive into thirty fathoms of cold water."
"I will be there," Tavish said.
"Come alone, Tavish," Dominic warned. "Or your daughter grows up an orphan."
The line went dead.
Tavish slowly lowered the phone, slipping it back into his breast pocket. He looked up into the dark, churning sky where lightning flickered over the distant Atlantic.
Nathan stepped up beside him, checking the action on a customized submachine gun. "How do you want to play it, Tavish? We have fifty men ready to roll on the Massachusetts turnpike right now."
"We don't take fifty men," Tavish said, his dark eyes glittering with lethal certainty.
Nathan frowned. "You’re going alone?"
"No," Tavish said, stepping down the grand stone staircase toward the lead vehicle. "I am taking the full garrison. Call the dockworkers’ union in Boston. Tell them to shut down the power grid across the entire Charlestown waterfront at three-thirty."
He pulled open the door of the armored Maybach, pausing on the threshold to look back at the grand estate where his daughter slept under armed guard.
"Dominic thinks he’s trading for a ledger," Tavish murmured, his voice cutting through the howl of the storm like an executioner’s axe. "He’s about to find out what happens when you drag a monster out of the dark."
May you like
Tavish slid into the leather seat and pulled the door shut with a heavy, armored thud.
The convoy accelerated forward, tires throwing up rooster tails of gravel as they surged through the iron gates and disappeared into the black, rain-swept night.
