Chapter 8 - The Shadow of the Patriarch
The name hung in the damp air inside the SUV like poison: Victor Thorne.
Thorne was the undisputed titan of the global arms trade, a man whose wealth operated above sovereign laws. Seven years ago, Julian’s brother had fallen in love with Thorne’s daughter, Elena. When Elena realized her father intended to raise her unborn child, Lily, as a bio-engineered psychological heir to his corporate empire, she fled with Julian’s brother. Thorne had hunted them relentlessly, culminating in the ambush that killed them both.
Julian had barely saved Lily from the burning wreckage that night, taking her into deep seclusion, assuming a clean identity among the aristocracy, and hiding Elena’s cryptographic key in plain sight as a high-society bauble.
"If Thorne is behind this," Marcus murmured, gripping the steering wheel until his knuckles bled, "Pier 44 isn't an extraction point. It’s an ambush."
"He doesn't want me dead until he gets the master cipher," Julian said. He took the diamond brooch, pried the silver casing open with the tip of his knife, and extracted a micro-transponder no larger than a grain of rice. "This brooch only holds half the key. The second half is coded into my retinal scan."
The SUV slowed as they approached the rusted iron entrance of Pier 44. The scent of saltwater, rust, and diesel fuel hung heavy in the air. Enormous shipping cranes towered over rows of stacked containers like prehistoric skeletons.
At the end of the central pier, a colossal container vessel, The Leviathan, was preparing to cast off, its massive diesel engines rumbling deep within the harbor.
Julian stepped out of the vehicle into the blinding drizzle. He discarded his torn tuxedo jacket, standing in his black dress shirt and combat harness.
A spotlight from atop a shipping container snapped on, pinning Julian in an unforgiving beam of white light.
On the gantry twenty feet above the pier, a silhouette stepped forward. It was Victor Thorne, leaning on a silver-headed cane, surrounded by six heavily armed mercenaries.
May you like
And hanging from a rusted crane cable directly over the churning, ice-cold ocean waters was a steel cage.
Inside the cage, shivering and crying, sat Lily.
