Chapter 9 - The Siege of Dry Dock Three
The dark was not empty; it was instantly filled with the deafening, concussive roar of a flashbang grenade detonating forty feet above the floorboards.
The pressure wave knocked me to my knees.
A white, blinding afterimage burned across my retinas, accompanied by a high-pitched ring that obliterated all sound. Mercer screamed—a high, ragged sound of disorientation—and the two enforcers began firing blind into the high rafters, their muzzle flashes illuminating the rusted iron girders in staccato bursts of orange light.
Through the strobe effect of the gunfire, I saw Damian drop.
He didn't use the stairs. He came down on a high-tension steel cable from the crane gantry, hitting the concrete floor with the impact of an artillery shell, his carbine already firing before his boots had fully absorbed the shock.
The enforcer to my left went down instantly, his rifle skittering across the floor toward my knees.
The second enforcer turned, but Nico was already behind him, coming through the low service door like an avalanche of muscle and steel, driving a six-inch combat blade up under the man’s ribcage with a single, sickening crunch of cartilage.
Mercer didn't try to fight.
He lunged for me.
His vicuña coat flared like the wings of a scavenger bird as his left hand reached for my hair, the silver utility knife in his right hand slashing downward toward my throat in a desperate, panicked arc.
I didn't cower. I didn't scream.
Two years of trauma surgery had taught me that when an artery is threatened, you do not pull away; you close the distance and control the lever.
I drove my body forward, inside the reach of the blade, slamming my forehead directly into the bridge of Mercer’s nose with every ounce of momentum I had.
Bone shattered with a wet, crunching pop.
Mercer shrieked, stumbling backward, his hands flying to his face as blood sprayed through his fingers. The utility knife clattered against the concrete.
“Elena, down!” Damian’s voice ripped through the ringing in my ears.
I dropped flat against the cold, damp stone, covering my head with my arms.
A single round echoed through the pump house.
Mercer stopped moving.
He stood swaying for two long, agonizing seconds in the dim beam of an overturned flashlight, looking down at the center of his chest, where a neat, round hole was rapidly turning the gray vicuña wool to black.
He looked up at Damian, who was walking toward him with the carbine lowered, his face an unreadable mask of slate and ash.
“You... you took the docks...” Mercer coughed, a thick, dark bubble rising from his lips.
“I didn't take the docks, Julian,” Damian said, stopping two paces away, his voice cold, steady, and devoid of hatred. “I built them. You just bled on them.”
Mercer collapsed backward, hitting the floor with a hollow, wet thud that signaled the end of an eight-year war for the soul of the Boston waterfront.
The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by Brenda’s ragged sobs and the distant, rhythmic lap of the tide against the dry dock gates.
Damian let the carbine drop against its sling.
He didn't look at Mercer’s body. He didn't look at the hard drives on the table or at Nico, who was already cutting Brenda’s zip-ties with professional efficiency.
He walked straight to where I was picking myself up from the concrete.
His hands were trembling—just slightly, an almost imperceptible tremor at the tips of his fingers that only someone who counted pulses for a living would ever have noticed. He reached out, his large, grease-stained palms cupping my face, lifting my chin until my eyes met his.
“Did he touch you?” Damian asked, his voice shaking with a rage that had nowhere left to go.
“No,” I breathed, leaning my weight against his chest, feeling the hard, frantic rhythm of his heart pounding through his tactical vest like a war drum. “I broke his nose.”
Damian stared at me for three long heartbeats.
Then, for the first time since I had walked into his penthouse thirty-six hours ago wearing that red silk dress, Damian Cross closed his eyes, rested his forehead against mine, and let out a long, shuddering breath that smelled of salt and survival.
“You’re fired as my nurse, Vance,” he whispered against my skin.
May you like
“Good,” I said, burying my face into the hollow of his neck, where the stitches I had put in were holding fast against the storm. “The pay was terrible anyway.”
***
