Chapter 9 - The Debt Paid in Full
The blast threw Julian backward onto the concrete floor of the cellar, his cutting torch clattering away, spitting wild blue fire against the stone wall.
Smoke, thick and smelling of cordite and pulverized brick, billowed through the ruined ceiling.
Above the jagged hole where the floor of the formal dining room used to be, a pair of heavy tactical boots dropped into the dust.
Vincent Marquette landed with the silence of a hunting cat.
He was wearing a black Kevlar vest over his ruined shirt, his face streaked with soot, a jagged cut bleeding across his left eyebrow. In his hands was a short-barreled tactical shotgun.
Behind him dropped Thomas and three other heavily armed men, their rifle lights slicing through the swirling dust like laser beams.
Julian scrambled backward on his elbows and knees, screaming in terror as he clawed toward his dropped pistol. “Vince! Wait! Vince, it was Montreal! They forced me! They threatened my family!”
Vincent didn't speak.
He didn't pause to listen to excuses, apologies, or pleas.
He racked the slide of the shotgun—a sound that cut through the basement like the cracking of doom—and fired.
The blast didn't hit Julian; it obliterated the concrete floor six inches between his splayed legs, sending razor-sharp fragments of stone into his thighs.
Julian shrieked, curling into a fetal ball, clutching his bleeding legs.
Vincent closed the distance in two strides. He set the heavy sole of his boot onto Julian’s chest, pinning the traitor against the floor with enough pressure to crack two ribs.
The barrel of the shotgun rested directly against the bridge of Julian’s already broken nose.
“You brought fire to my house,” Vincent said. His voice wasn’t loud. It wasn’t screaming. It was the terrifying, bottomless whisper of an executioner who had already weighed the soul and found it worthless. “You laid hands on a four-year-old child whose father you murdered.”
“Vince... please...” Julian choked out, blood and tears pooling in his eyes. “Please... we were partners...”
“Daniel Reyes was my partner,” Vincent said. “You were just an infection.”
Inside the panic room, I watched through the narrow slit of the smoking door.
Mrs. Doyle slowly lowered her revolver, letting out a long, shuddering sigh of relief.
Lily peeked over my shoulder.
She saw the smoke. She saw the men in black armor.
And she saw Vincent, standing like a dark avenging angel over the man who had terrified us.
“Mister!” Lily’s voice pierced the gloom of the cellar, clear and small.
Vincent froze.
The shotgun barrel didn't waver, but his dark gray eyes flickered toward the cracked steel door where Lily’s face was visible through the smoke.
“Rule four,” Lily said, her little voice trembling but determined. “No loud noises. And say sorry.”
Vincent looked from the little girl back down to the broken, sobbing man beneath his boot.
For three long seconds, the fate of a man’s life hung on the word of a four-year-old child.
Vincent slowly rotated his wrist. He lowered the barrel of the shotgun, pointing it at the floor.
“Thomas,” Vincent murmured.
“Yes, boss?”
“Call the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York,” Vincent said, never taking his eyes off Julian. “Tell him I have four tons of intercepted military guidance hardware, thirty captured Montreal cartel operatives on the Route 80 marsh crossing, and the mastermind behind three years of interstate racketeering.”
Julian stared up in disbelief. “You’re... you’re giving me to the feds?”
“The feds will put you in a maximum-security penitentiary in Florence, Colorado, Julian,” Vincent said coldly, pressing his boot just a little harder against his sternum. “Twenty-three hours a day in a concrete box, with no human contact, for the rest of your natural life. Death would be too quick. You’re going to sit in the dark and think about Daniel Reyes every single morning until you rot.”
Vincent stepped off him.
“Drag him out,” Vincent ordered. “And clean my floor.”
Thomas and Paul hoisted the weeping traitor by his arms, dragging him out through the ruined corridor into the custody of the sirens that were already wailing in the distance.
Vincent turned toward the vault.
He dropped the shotgun onto a wooden crate, tore off his Kevlar vest, and stepped through the scorched threshold.
He stopped three feet from where I was standing, his hands shaking slightly from the adrenaline of battle.
I didn't think about his wealth. I didn't think about his reputation. I didn't think about the dozens of armed men standing in the hallway.
I lunged forward and wrapped my arms around his neck, burying my face against his broad, soot-stained shoulder.
Vincent went completely rigid for half a second—a man unaccustomed to being touched with anything resembling affection.
Then, his massive arms came around me, pulling me against his chest with a fierce, trembling warmth that made the entire terrifying world outside disappear.
“You’re safe,” he whispered against my hair. “Elena... you’re safe. Both of you.”
Lily squeezed herself between us, wrapping her arms around Vincent’s leg, her face pressed against his knee.
“Mister,” she murmured sleepily.
Vincent looked down, a soft, weary smile breaking through the dirt and blood on his face.
“Yes, captain?”
“You can have pancakes tomorrow,” she said. “Two of them.”
Vincent let out a ragged, breathless laugh—a sound that Mrs. Doyle later told me she hadn't heard from him in twenty-five years.
May you like
“Deal,” Vincent whispered, lifting her into his arms while keeping his other hand resting gently, possessively, against the small of my back. “Two pancakes. With extra syrup.”
***
