Chapter 13 - The Reckoning
Z
Adrian didn't look human. He looked like a storm given flesh and steel.
His suit jacket was gone, his dark shirt torn across the chest, dripping with water and blood. He advanced down the sidewalk with a slow, deliberate pace, the heavy rifle held low against his hip.
Senator Vance panicked, slamming the rear door of the sedan shut and screaming at his driver: “DRIVE! GET US OUT OF HERE!”
The driver slammed his foot on the accelerator. The heavy sedan lurched forward, tires screeching against the wet asphalt, heading straight toward the avenue.
Adrian didn't flinch. He raised the rifle, his eye locking onto the front tire of the accelerating car, and fired three heavy rounds in rapid succession.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The front axle of the luxury car shattered. The vehicle buckled, sliding out of control across the slick pavement, mounting the sidewalk, and crashing violently into the iron lamppost outside the closed entrance of Sal’s Diner.
Glass showered the street. Steam erupted from the crumpled hood in thick, white plumes.
I stood frozen in the rain as Adrian walked past me, his eyes never leaving the wreckage. He didn't check on the driver. He walked straight to the rear door of the crumpled car, yanked the twisted metal frame open with a single, brutal effort, and pulled Julian out into the street by his hair.
Julian wept, clutching his bleeding face, his hands raised in desperate surrender. “Adrian! Please! It was Thomas! Senator Vance paid for everything! He threatened my family!”
Adrian threw Julian onto the wet pavement at my feet. He rested the heavy steel barrel of the rifle directly against the center of Julian’s forehead.
“You made my son believe his mother was a ghost,” Adrian said, his voice a low, terrifying vibration that cut through the sound of the falling rain. “You made him sleep with the lights on for three years.”
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Julian sobbed, pressing his hands against the wet asphalt. “Please, Adrian... we’re blood!”
“You aren't my blood,” Adrian murmured softly. “You’re just a stain on my father’s name.”
I stepped forward, reaching out with a trembling hand, placing my palm gently over Adrian’s knuckles on the rifle frame.
“Adrian,” I whispered.
He didn't move. His finger remained resting against the trigger, his jaw set in a line of absolute, uncompromising judgment.
“Don't,” I begged him gently, stepping between him and the weeping man on the ground. I looked into his dark, bloodshot eyes, seeing the terrible storm raging inside him. “If you shoot him now, they win. They turn you into what they claimed you were. Leo needs his father, Adrian. He doesn't need another grave to visit.”
For five long, breathless seconds, the world hung on the edge of a blade.
Slowly, terrifyingly, the tension in Adrian’s shoulders broke. He lowered the rifle, throwing it dismissively into the gutter beside the ruined car.
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He looked down at Julian, his dark eyes filled with absolute, cold disgust.
“The police are already on their way, Julian,” Adrian said softly. “And this time, no amount of money in Delaware is going to open your cell door.”
