Chapter 3 - Blood and Ledger"Drop the piece, Dominic."
The voice belonged to Marcus Voss, but the tone was entirely foreign. It lacked the steady, subordinate deference of a chief of security. It carried the cold, flat certainty of a man holding all the cards.
I stepped out of the bedroom, keeping my Sig Sauer level, training the barrel squarely on the center of Marcus’s chest. He wasn't alone. Two men in tactical vests—operatives I recognized from our private security detail—flanked him in the narrow corridor, their assault rifles raised.
"You've been busy tonight, Marcus," I said, my voice dangerously calm. "How long have you been working for Julian?"
"Since before you learned how to sign your name on a corporate deed, boss," Marcus replied, not blinking. "Julian didn't want you dead tonight at the museum. That was never the play. The play was to create enough chaos so you’d start looking for answers in all the wrong places—or better yet, let Claire take the fall."
"Claire took a round in the chest," I snapped. "That wasn't part of any play."
"That," Marcus sighed, shaking his head slightly, "was Claire improvising. She was always too soft for the work her father started. Agent Vance trained her to be a ghost, but she actually started believing her own cover story. She started caring about the man whose mail she sorted."
"She’s an operative?"
"Her father was Vance. The federal investigator your grandfather buried under the concrete of Pier 42," Marcus said casually, as if reading off a shipping manifest. "When the feds shut down the investigation back in the nineties, your family absorbed the remnants. Claire was left over. We raised her, trained her, and planted her in your office the day you took over the holding company. Her job was simple: keep you focused on real estate and corporate acquisitions so you never started digging into the underground ledgers."
My finger tightened on the trigger. Every instinct I possessed—every brutal lesson my grandfather had drilled into me since I was a child—screamed at me to put a bullet through Marcus’s skull right where he stood.
"And the shooter at the museum?" I asked.
"Julian’s guy," Marcus admitted. "Julian wanted to remind you that your little empire has cracks in the foundation. He wants the board seat, he wants the waterfront concessions, and he wants you out of the picture before the federal grand jury in Brooklyn opens their sealed indictments next month."
"Indictments?"
"Oh, you didn't know?" Marcus smiled, a thin, humorless stretching of his lips. "Claire didn't get around to showing you that file yet. The feds have had your secondary accounts flagged since January. The whole holding company is about to be seized under the RICO Act."
The world seemed to tilt. Every building I owned, every bank account, every title, every drop of blood my family had spilled for three generations—it was all standing on a foundation of sand, and the tide was already coming in.
"Where is Julian right now?" I asked.
"Waiting for you at the penthouse," Marcus said, raising his rifle another inch. "He wants your signature on the corporate transfer documents before the police arrive to sweep the apartment. And Dominic? Don't try anything clever. The men outside have your SUV surrounded, and the hospital room where Claire is currently recovering? We left a nurse there who specializes in cardiac arrests caused by air bubbles in the IV line."
The air left my lungs as if I had taken a physical blow.
Claire.
She was lying on a hospital bed four miles away, defenseless, bleeding from a surgical repair, and Marcus had just signed her death warrant to force my hand.
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"You touch her," I whispered, "and I swear to God I will tear this entire city down to the bedrock before they drag me away."
"Clock's ticking, boss," Marcus said, stepping aside to let me pass. "Let's go see your uncle."
