Chapter 5 - The Confrontation at Bay TwelveThe rain began to turn to sleet, stinging exposed skin as the temperature plummeted below freezing.
Vincent stood in the open space between Bay Twelve and the central crane tracks, holding his tactical shotgun at the ready. He knew Daniel was close. He could smell the ozone, gunpowder, and iron in the air.
"Come out, Daniel!" Vincent yelled into the dark. "There's nowhere left to run! You lost your empire the night the bullet hit your spine!"
A figure emerged from the shadows between two towering stacks of containers.
Daniel wasn't walking. He was pulling himself across the wet concrete using his hands, his shoulders bunched with muscle, his dark hair soaked and matted to his forehead. He looked less like a crime lord and more like a primordial beast refusing to die.
Vincent stopped twenty feet away, lowering the barrel of his shotgun slightly as a twisted look of fascination crossed his face.
"Look at you," Vincent sneered. "Crawling in the dirt like an animal. Why don't you just quit? Give us the access codes to the offshore accounts, and Marcus might let you live out your days in some quiet nursing home in the mountains."
Daniel stopped. He rested his forearms on the concrete, chest heaving, steam rising from his jacket in the freezing air.
"Seventeen years ago, Vincent," Daniel said, his voice cutting cleanly through the wind, "we shared a bowl of rice in a basement apartment with twenty dollars between us. You said we would never starve again."
"Times change, Daniel," Vincent replied coldly. "Power rots."
"No," Daniel said, his eyes locking onto his former friend with terrifying clarity. "Greed rots. You didn't betray me because I got paralyzed. You betrayed me because you realized you could never be the man I was, even from a wheelchair."
Vincent's face twisted with rage. He raised the shotgun barrel straight toward Daniel’s chest. "End of the line, brother."
Before Vincent’s finger could pull the trigger, a blinding beam of white light slammed into his eyes from above.
The massive industrial crane overhead—controlled remotely from miles away by Amara—swung its boom arm violently across the sky, dropping a dangling two-ton steel hook directly between Vincent and Daniel.
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Vincent stumbled backward, blinded by the floodlight.
It was all the opening Daniel needed.
