Chapter 13 - The Price of Looking Directly
Adriana didn't flinch.
Her hand remained steady on the keyboard. Her other hand was out of sight beneath the counter.
“You’re too late, Lorenzo,” she said, her voice freezing cold. “It’s at ninety-eight percent. The Southern District of New York just received the unedited RAW files with your digital signature embedded in every frame.”
Transfer Complete.
Lorenzo’s eyes widened with manic fury. “Then you die first!”
He pulled the trigger.
CLICK.
Nothing happened.
Adriana looked up at him, a cold, mocking smile on her lips. In her left hand, raised above the counter, was the firing pin assembly she had stripped from his dropped auxiliary weapon during the bunker raid.
“Occupational hazard,” Adriana whispered. “I know how mechanical parts fit together.”
Lorenzo lunged forward with a roar of pure hatred.
Before he could cross the counter, Victor Moretti slammed into him like a freight train, driving Lorenzo through the wooden partition and onto the marble floor of the lobby.
The fight was brutal, short, and absolute.
Victor disarmed Lorenzo with a single, bone-shattering strike to the wrist, pinned him to the floor with a knee to the sternum, and pressed the cold muzzle of his Sig Sauer against Lorenzo’s forehead.
Outside, the heavy glass doors of the lobby were breached—not by Vance’s rogue squad, but by legitimate agents of the FBI’s Internal Affairs and Organized Crime Division, led by federal prosecutors holding arrest warrants for Raymond Vance.
“Federal agents! Drop your weapons!” the tactical commander shouted over a bullhorn.
Victor did not look at the agents. His eyes were locked on the man beneath him who had betrayed two decades of brotherhood.
“Why, Lorenzo?” Victor asked in a low, terrifying growl. “I gave you half of an empire.”
Lorenzo spat blood onto the marble, his face contorted in bitter jealousy. “Because it was always your empire, Victor! You sat on the throne, looking down on everyone, thinking you were untouchable! I wanted to see you burn!”
Victor looked down at him with nothing but pity.
“You looked at the throne, Lorenzo. You should have been looking at the foundation.”
Victor slowly lowered the hammer on his weapon, stood up, and tossed the gun onto the floor.
FBI agents swarmed Lorenzo, pinning him to the ground in zip-ties as federal marshals simultaneously arrested Raymond Vance just outside the perimeter.
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Victor turned his back on the wreckage. He didn't look at the police, the flashing red-and-blue lights, or the sirens.
He walked straight to the dispatch booth, extended his hand, and pulled Adriana Blake into his arms.
