Chapter 9 - The Living Judgment
The room rose as one body, chairs scraping violently against the hardwood.
Standing in the shattered doorway was Julian DeLuca.
His custom suit was ruined—caked with dried river mud, torn at the left shoulder, stained with dark blood along the collar. His stubbled face was gray with forty-eight hours of sleeplessness, but his dark eyes burned with an unholy, lethal clarity that rooted thirty men to their spots.
Beside him walked Katherine.
She wore a simple dark wool coat provided by the harbor mission, her hair cropped short, the silver scar across her face stark and undeniable beneath the glare of the recessed LED panels.
And between them, walking with the slow, measured, heavy cadence of a hunting wolf, was Bruno. The cane corso’s clipped ears were forward, his dark lips drawn back just enough to reveal three inches of glistening ivory fangs, his brass-studded harness clinking softly in the dead silence.
Vincent’s gold pen slipped from his hand, bouncing off the obsidian table and rolling onto the carpet with a tiny, pathetic tap.
The color did not drain from his face; it was ripped out, leaving his skin the translucent, gray hue of wet dough. His knees hit the edge of the leather chair, his jaw dropping as if he were looking at the gaping mouth of hell.
"K-Katherine...?" Vincent croaked, his voice cracking on the syllable, turning into a soundless wheeze.
Katherine stepped forward, her flat boots clicking with deliberate, unhurried rhythm against the floor. She did not yell. She did not cry. She looked at the brother who had shared her nursery, the brother who had stood beside her at their father’s grave, with an expression of pure, devastating pity.
She reached into her coat pocket, pulled out a heavy steel thumb drive, and dropped it onto the center of the forty-foot table.
"The container manifests for berths four through seven, Vincent," Katherine said. Her voice was not loud, but it filled every corner of the fifty-floor tower. "The secondary ledgers from the Bank of Nova Scotia. The wire receipts signed with your personal authorization code."
May you like
She paused, stepping to the edge of the table, leaning her scarred face into the light.
"And the dashcam footage from my Mercedes," she added softly. "The rear-facing camera survived the dive, Vincent. It recorded your Range Rover’s license plate as you rammed my bumper on the hairpin turn at Oyster Bay."
