Chapter 13 - The Poisoned Chalice
Z
Two months after the Plaza gala, the quiet luxury of the Sterling family estate in the Hamptons provided a deceptively peaceful sanctuary. The Atlantic Ocean crashed against the private cliffs below the sprawling glass-and-limestone compound. But inside the private master study, peace was an illusion that cost fifty thousand dollars a day in electronic counter-surveillance.
I sat behind the massive walnut desk, reviewing the final restructuring audits for our European acquisitions. Across from me sat Vance, methodically cleaning the optical sensors of a surveillance drone.
The encrypted landline on my desk rang with a sharp, piercing tone—the dedicated line connected directly to the Southern District of New York’s federal witness protection division.
I picked up the receiver. “Mabel Sterling.”
“Miss Sterling, this is Assistant U.S. Attorney Marcus Reed,” a tight, stressed voice said over the line. “We have a catastrophic breach at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute.”
My pen stopped mid-air over the audit documents. “Aidan or Fiona?”
“Both,” Reed replied, breathing heavily. “Forty minutes ago, during a coordinated power failure in the medical wing, a private tactical extraction team disguised as federal marshals breached the perimeter. They used heavy cutting torches on the transfer holding cells. Aidan and Fiona were extracted via a civilian medevac helicopter that had been hijacked three hours prior in Indianapolis.”
“Casualties?” I demanded, standing up from my desk.
“Three guards dead, two in critical condition,” Reed said. “The helicopter was found burning in an abandoned cornfield thirty miles west of the facility. No bodies inside. They transferred to a secondary convoy. Miss Sterling, Aidan left a message scrawled in grease paint on the holding cell wall.”
“What did it say?”
“The debt will be collected in blood, daughter.”
I hung up the phone without another word.
Vance was already on his feet, his drone sensor abandoned, his hand resting on the holster of his sidearm. “I heard the tone of his voice. What’s the situation?”
“Aidan and Fiona are out,” I said, walking over to the floor-to-ceiling glass wall overlooking the Atlantic. “Someone with military-grade logistics just broke two sixty-year-old felons out of a federal supermax facility.”
“That kind of extraction costs upwards of fifty million dollars,” Vance said, pulling up the estate’s tactical defense grid on his rugged tablet. “Julian Vance is locked in ADX Florence with zero communication access. The Voronezh Syndicate’s leadership was eradicated on Pier 54. Who has that kind of operational liquidity?”
“Someone who wants to finish what Flynn started,” I replied, staring out at the dark ocean waves crashing against the rocks. “Aidan and Fiona don’t have thirty million dollars. They are bait. Someone extracted them to draw me out of Manhattan into a kinetic kill zone.”
Right on cue, the lights inside the entire twenty-thousand-square-foot estate suddenly flickered and died.
The emergency red backup lights hummed to life along the baseboards, casting long, bloody shadows across the walnut walls. Outside, the hum of the main security grid’s perimeter fence ceased entirely.
“Perimeter breach on the south lawn!” an operative’s voice crackled through Vance’s radio headset, followed immediately by the sharp, deafening rattle of automatic rifle fire. “Multiple hostiles coming up from the beach! They have thermal optics and heavy suppressors—!”
The radio cut out into static with a wet, choking gasp.
“Mabel, into the safe room right now!” Vance shouted, drawing his suppressed tactical pistol and moving toward the double doors of the study.
“No safe rooms, Vance,” I said, reaching into the hidden compartment beneath the walnut desk and pulling out a short-barreled tactical twelve-gauge shotgun. “A safe room is just a coffin with an electronic lock. If Aidan and Fiona want their inheritance, they’re going to have to take it from my cold, dead hands.”
The heavy oak doors of the study were violently blown inward by a directional breach charge, showering the room in splinters and acrid grey smoke.
Through the smoke, two heavily armed mercenaries in black tactical gear entered with weapons raised. Vance dropped the first one with two center-mass shots before the man could clear the doorway. The second mercenary fired a burst that tore through the walnut bookshelf behind my head.
I stepped out from behind the desk, leveled the shotgun, and pulled the trigger.
The blast caught the mercenary squarely in the chest plate, throwing him backward through the shattered doorway into the hallway.
Vance stepped over the bodies, his eyes scanning the corridor. “We have at least eight more in the main gallery. We need to reach the underground tunnel to the helipad.”
“Not yet,” I said, picking up the fallen mercenary’s radio and listening to the transmission coming over the tactical channel.
A raspy, hateful woman’s voice came over the speaker:
“Find that little bitch! Burn the entire house down around her! I want her head on my lap before the Coast Guard arrives!”
It was Fiona.
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She had spent six months in federal prison eating slop, and she had come straight to my house to collect her revenge.
I racked another shell into the shotgun with a clean, metallic clack. “They didn't come to steal money, Vance. They came for a family reunion. Let's make sure it's their last.”
