Chapter 5 - The Butcher’s EndViktor didn't hesitate. He pulled the trigger.
BLAM!
Buckshot chewed through the concrete pillar inches from my head, showering me in stone dust. I dove sideways behind a heavy oak workbench as a second blast splintered the wood to matchsticks.
"You're slipping, Lucas!" Viktor roared, stepping closer, his heavy combat boots crunching on the debris. "Five years on top made you soft! You think you can run Boston forever?"
I didn't answer. I pulled a flash-bang grenade from my tactical belt, pulled the pin with my teeth, and counted to one in my head before lobbing it over the workbench.
CLATTER.
"What the—" Viktor muttered.
FLASH-BANG!
A blinding wall of magnesium white light and a deafening 180-decibel shockwave detonated directly in front of him. Viktor shrieked, dropping his shotgun and clutching his ears, stumbling backward into a rack of steel pipes.
I was on him in a fraction of a second.
I slammed my combat boot into his knee joint, hearing the sickening crunch of cartilage as he dropped to the floor. Before he could recover, I grabbed a heavy steel wrench from the workbench and brought it down hard across his temple.
Viktor collapsed instantly, unconscious and bleeding onto the concrete.
I stood over him, breathing heavily, wiping a streak of sweat and blood from my forehead. I didn't waste time finishing him—I tied his hands behind his back with heavy industrial zipties and dragged him into the storage locker, locking it tight.
My phone—a secure satellite unit strapped to my wrist—vibrated.
It was a text message from an unknown number.
“You’re running out of time, Lucas. The main house is surrounded. Surrender yourself in the courtyard, or I burn the panic room down with the kid inside.”
— Vincent Cross.
A dark, icy calm settled over my chest. Cross thought he held all the cards. He thought he was playing chess while everyone else played checkers.
He didn't realize I had just unlocked the nuclear codes.
I inserted Clara’s micro-encryption core into my wrist terminal and synced it directly to the estate's master mainframe. Instantly, a decryption progress bar filled the screen: 5%... 42%... 89%... 100%.
Files began downloading by the thousands. Offshore bank accounts in Zurich, Cayman shell companies, federal wiretaps linking Cross to the federal D.A.’s office, and—most importantly—the real truth about Clara Vance’s disappearance five years ago.
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She hadn't run away from me. Cross had kidnapped her. And she had spent five years gathering the exact evidence needed to tear his entire criminal empire down to ash.
And now, her daughter had delivered it right into my hands.
