Chapter 2 - The Ashford VengeanceThe roar of a high-performance twin-turbo engine tore through the wet air of Fifth Avenue before Garrett could process the warning.
A matte-black Maybach with tinted glass lunged out of the Ashford motorcade, cutting sharply across two lanes of stalled traffic to block the intersection. The rear door flew open with the force of a guillotine blade hitting wood, and Vincent Ashford stepped out.
At seventy-two, the patriarch of the city's oldest Italian-American syndicate still moved like a middleweight boxer. His silver hair was slicked back with pomade, his bespoke charcoal suit smelling faintly of expensive cigars and gun oil. In his right hand, he held a heavy silver-headed cane, but everyone in the underworld knew the cane was just for show—his true weapon was the three-inch stiletto blade tucked into the lining of his silk vest, or the dozen made men currently piling out of the surrounding vehicles with their hands resting casually inside their jackets.
"Garrett!" Vincent’s voice boomed across the wet asphalt, carrying over the blaring horns of trapped taxis. His face was mottled with a dark, dangerous fury that made the passing pedestrians scatter in absolute panic. "Have you lost your absolute, goddamn mind? We have five hundred high-paying guests, three federal judges, and a truce that cost me forty million dollars in shipping rights sitting in that cathedral. And you’re standing in the middle of a gutter playing domestic dress-up with a beggar?"
Garrett didn’t turn around immediately. He kept his eyes fixed on Mave, who had backed up until her shoulders pressed flat against a rusted storefront security gate. The little girl, Posie, had started crying—a high, terrified wail that cut straight through the ambient noise of the city.
"Get back in the car, boy," Vincent hissed, closing the distance between them with surprising speed. His hand reached out, heavy and claw-like, to grab Garrett’s velvet-lapeled shoulder. "This trash isn't worth the paper it’s printed on. Whatever she’s trying to pull—extortion, blackmail, some cheap stunt to stop this wedding—it ends right now. My men will handle her."
The moment Vincent’s fingers brushed his shoulder, the invisible wall inside Garrett’s mind snapped.
In a movement so fast it defied human reaction, Garrett’s hand shot out, locked around Vincent’s wrist, and twisted it upward with a sickening pop of joint cartilage.
The older man gasped, his eyes going wide with shock as Garrett shoved him backward against the side of the Maybach. The heavy silver cane clattered onto the wet concrete, ringing like a church bell.
Across the street, a dozen guns cleared leather in unison. The sharp click-clack of automatic weapons being unholstered echoed down the block like a string of firecrackers.
"Lower your weapons," Mateo’s voice rang out like a thunderclap as he and three of Garrett’s elite guards threw open the doors of the lead Escalade, leveling submachine guns directly at the Ashford enforcers. "Do it! Now! Nobody touches the boss!"
"Garrett!" Victoria screamed, finally throwing open her car door and stumbling out onto the pavement in her five-thousand-dollar Vera Wang wedding gown, the pristine white train dragging directly through a puddle of oily sludge. "Are you insane?! You just assaulted my father! You’re putting a gun to our entire family's head over a streetwalker?!"
Garrett ignored them all. The chaos around him—the shouting guards, the terrified civilians, the pulsing red-and-blue lights of a distant police cruiser starting to weave through the traffic—all of it faded into a distant white noise.
He looked down at Mave. She was clutching the child so tightly her knuckles were translucent. The sheer terror in her face had hardened into something cold, something ancient and unforgiving.
"You should have stayed in Paris, Mave," Garrett said quietly, his voice dangerously low. "You should have stayed across an ocean where I couldn't find you. Because the moment I laid eyes on those gray eyes..." He glanced briefly at the little girl, whose crying had dropped to a terrified hiccup. "...the game changed. The treaty is dead, Vincent," he called out without looking back at the sputtering, pain-racked patriarch leaning against the car door. "The wedding is off."
Vincent spat a glob of blood onto the wet pavement, his face purple with rage. "You think you can walk away from an Ashford, boy? You think you can humiliate my daughter on live television—because half the press corps is streaming this right now—and live to see tomorrow? I’ll strip your ports. I’ll burn your warehouses to ash. I’ll put a bounty on every man who ever shook your hand!"
"Try it," Garrett said softly.
He stepped back from Mave, but not before sliding a heavy, gold-engraved platinum signet ring off his pinky finger and dropping it quietly into the side pocket of her frayed coat without her realizing it until it was too late.
"Stay right here," Garrett commanded, his voice carrying an absolute, monarchical authority that left no room for argument. "If you run, Mave, I will lock down every airport, every train station, and every highway in the Tri-State area before you can cross the street. My men will find you. And this time, I won't ask questions."
He turned on his heel, his dark tuxedo jacket billowing in the cold wind, and walked past the stunned, silent ranks of the Ashford enforcers. He didn't look at Victoria as she stood sobbing hysterically in the mud, her white dress ruined beyond recognition.
May you like
He climbed back into the armored Lincoln, pulled the heavy door shut with a dull, echoing thud, and looked at Mateo through the bulletproof glass partition.
"Get the car moving," Garrett ordered, his winter-gray eyes burning with a cold, terrifying fire. "We're going to the penthouse. And call every contractor in Manhattan. We’re building a nursery."
