Chapter 10 - The Sins of the Father
Z
The campus was a labyrinth of wet brick and hurried students hiding beneath brightly colored umbrellas. I moved through them like water, a shadow against the gray backdrop of the afternoon storm. My mind was operating on two parallel tracks: the immediate tactical requirement of securing the package, and the dark, churning memories that the sequence of numbers had resurrected.
Victor Thorne.
Twelve years ago, Thorne had been my handler for a covert intelligence branch so deeply buried that it didn't even have an acronym. We existed off the books, performing the surgical strikes and extractions that the sanctioned agencies couldn't touch. Thorne was a master strategist, a brilliant chess player who viewed human lives as expendable pawns. I had been his knight, the blunt instrument of his will, until the operation in Prague. Thorne had sold our extraction coordinates to a rival syndicate for a seven-figure payout, assuming I would die in the crossfire and tie off the loose end. He had underestimated me. I survived, I found him, and I left him bleeding out on a cold concrete floor with a severed femoral artery.
I hadn't waited around to watch him die. That was my mistake. In this business, if you don't watch the light leave their eyes, they aren't dead.
I reached Lily's dormitory, a historic stone building with a modern security vestibule attached to the front. I bypassed the main entrance, slipping through a side service door that I had manipulated weeks ago to bypass the magnetic lock. I navigated the basement corridors, avoiding the camera sightlines I had memorized, and emerged in the lobby from the stairwell directly behind the front desk.
The student receptionist, a kid wearing oversized headphones and staring blankly at a textbook, didn't even look up as I slid past his peripheral vision. There, sitting on the sorting table among the Amazon boxes and care packages, was a small, plain brown box.
I reached out and picked it up. It was light. It rattled slightly.
I didn't open it there. I slipped it into the deep pocket of my trench coat and walked out the front door, mingling seamlessly with a group of students exiting for dinner. I needed a sterile environment.
Ten minutes later, I was in the back of a rented panel van parked in a municipal garage three miles off-campus. The van was my mobile forward operating base, lined with Faraday shielding to block all electronic signals and stocked with basic tactical gear.
I placed the brown box on the metal workbench. I put on a pair of black nitrile gloves and retrieved a ceramic blade. I carefully sliced the tape, my eyes scanning the edges for tripwires or pressure detonators. It was clean. It wasn't a bomb. Thorne was too theatrical for something as crude as an explosive. He wanted to send a message.
I opened the flaps. Inside, resting on a bed of black foam, was a silver Zippo lighter.
I stared at it, a cold sweat breaking out across my shoulders. It was my lighter. The one I had lost in Prague twelve years ago, the night everything went to hell. The night Sarah died.
I picked it up. The cold metal burned through the thin nitrile of my gloves. I flipped it over. Engraved on the bottom, barely visible beneath a matrix of deep scratches, were the initials S.W.—Sarah Walker. It had been her anniversary gift to me, a lifetime ago.
Beneath the lighter, tucked into a slit in the foam, was a single, heavy piece of cardstock. I pulled it out. The handwriting was elegant, precise, and written in dark, dried ink.
You broke my empire, Daniel. I am going to break your world. Starting with the girl who has her mother's eyes.
A primal, suffocating rage clawed its way up my throat. Thorne hadn't just survived. He had spent the last decade building a new empire, likely the very shadow syndicate that had backed Whitmore's toxic real estate ventures. When I dismantled Whitmore, I had unknowingly stepped on Thorne's toes. And now, he knew exactly where I was. He knew about Lily.
I closed the lighter with a sharp, metallic snap that echoed loudly in the confined space of the van. The game had fundamentally changed. Against Whitmore, I was fighting arrogant civilians who thought their bank accounts made them invincible. Against Victor Thorne, I was fighting a mirror image of myself. A predator who knew my tactics, my history, and my weaknesses.
My phone buzzed. It was an analog burner, untraceable. I answered it.
"Dad?" Lily's voice came through, sounding tired. "Are you still coming over for dinner? I’m back at the dorm. Someone said there was a package for me, but the desk clerk can't find it."
"There was a mix-up with the delivery, sweetheart," I lied smoothly, the father persona sliding back into place, though the edges felt brittle. "I picked it up for you. It was just some consulting paperwork sent to the wrong address."
"Oh. Okay. So, dinner?"
"Actually, Lily, change of plans," I said, staring at the silver lighter in my hand. "Pack a bag. Enough clothes for a week. We're going on a trip."
"A trip? Dad, it's the middle of the semester. I have midterms next week. I can't just leave."
"I know," I kept my voice perfectly level, stripping out any hint of panic. "But we're going. I'll be at the front curb in twenty minutes. Be ready."
"Dad, what's going on? You sound... weird."
"Twenty minutes, Lily. I love you."
May you like
I hung up before she could argue. I stripped off the gloves, shoved the lighter into my pocket, and moved into the driver's seat of the van. The engine roared to life, a deep, aggressive growl that matched the violence churning in my blood.
I was going to take Lily to the only place she would be safe. And then, I was going to hunt Victor Thorne down and finish what I started twelve years ago. This time, I wouldn't leave until his heart stopped beating entirely.
